ADRi. 

HAROLD  OWEN 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 

THE  MENACE  OF  SUFFRAGISM 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 

A    STATEMENT  OF 
THE   CASE  AGAINST  SUFFRAGISM 


BY 

HAROLD  '  OWEN 


"  I  enteitain  very  strong  hope  that  if  the  case  were  clearly  and  cogently 
presented  to  the  public  opinion  of  the  country,  it  would  be  found  that  some 
of  the  jubilations  already  being  heard  from  the  supporters  of  the  Suffrage 
movement  would  be  found  to  have  been  premature." 

— The  Rt.  Hon.  H.  H.  Asquith  [in  Farliamint,  Die.  iQii]. 


NEW  YORK 

E  •  P  •  BUTTON  ^  COMPANY 
ji  West  Twenty-Third  Streeti 


MY  MOTHER'S  MEMORY 


CONTENTS 

ChapUf  Page 

I.  The  Scope  of  the  Question  ...  3 

II.  The  "  Right  "  to  a  Vote     ...  17 

III.  The  Road  Begun  by  the  First  Step  .  27 

IV.  "As  IT  WAS  IN  THE  BEGINNING  "  .         .  37 

V.  Superfluous  Woman     ....  45 

VI,  The  Two  Hemispheres  of  Mankind   .  57 

VII,  The  Man  Behind  the  Vote  ...  67 

VIII,  The  Three  "  Rights  "  .            .      ,  83 

IX.  The  Two  Kinds  of  Women  .      .  .103 

X.  Sex  and  Politics  123 

XI.  How  Could  Woman  Serve  the  State  ?  135 

XII.  The  Woman  and  the  Law  .  -157 

XIII.  Chivalry  and  Martyrdom   .      .  .173 

XIV.  The  Suffragist's  Bible       .      .  .195 
XV.  Suffragist  and  Feminist     .      .  .217 

XVI.  "  Liberty  "  and  a  New  Slavery       .  237 

XVII.  The  Great  Experiment       .      .      .  261 

XVIII.   The  Wrong  Road  289 


CHAPTER  I. 
The  Scope  Of  The  Question. 

THE  "SHORT-CUT"  TO  SAVE  THINKING— THE  SUPER- 
FICIAL VIEW — THE  "DEMOCRATIC"  AkOUMENT — THE 
"DEMOCRATIC"  BIGOT— MAN  AND  THE  RACE— MAN 
AND  NATURAL  LAWS — THE  LONG  VIEW, 


CHAPTER  I. 


The  Scope  Of  The  Question. 

The  fundamental  difference  of  opinion  between  those 
who  support  and  those  who  oppose  the  extension  of 
the  franchise  to  women  is  that  the  former  regard  that 
step,  with  its  impHcations,  as  one  of  progress,  and  the 
latter  look  upon  it  as  at  best  a  dangerous  experiment 
and  at  worst  a  positive  retrogression.  In  one  sense 
of  the  word — the  merely  locomotive  sense — the  sup- 
porters are  right.  To  move  from  any  given  point  to 
a  point  beyond  is  undoubtedly  to  progress,  in  the 
sense  of  going  forward.  If  A  and  B  are  on  a  cliff, 
and  A  remains  where  he  finds  himself,  fifteen  yards 
from  the  edge,  but  B  progresses  fifteen  yards  and  a 
bit  further  than  the  unprogressive  A,  he  is  certainly 
going  forward  and  leaving  A  behind.  But  when  B 
is  tumbling  over  the  precipice  he  might  just  have  time 
to  reflect  before  he  touched  bottom  that  he  had  not 
progressed  in  the  beneficent  sense  of  that  word. 

The  modern  movement  among  women  has  reached 
a  stage  when  I  venture  to  believe  it  threatens  to 
become  a  progression  of  very  much  the  same  kind, 
and  it  will  be  the  effort  of  this  book  to  establish 
that  truth.  But  to  begin  with  it  is  not  necessary  to 
make  that  full  contention.  A  preliminary  point  to 
be  made  clear  is  that,  in  the  development  of  human 
political  and  social  institutions,  the  same  law  of  a 
false  progress  may  hold  good  as  in  the  physical 
world — when  illustrated  by  any  example,  such  as 
that  which  I  have  just  given,  showing  that  safety 
lies  in  refraining  from  going  forward. 


3 


4 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


The  "Short-Cut" 
to  Save  Thinking. 

There  can,  I  think,  be  no  denial  of  the  statement 
that  a  large  proportion  of  those  men  who  support 
Woman  Suffrage  do  so,  not  on  the  particular  ground 
that  they  believe  the  extension,  in  and  of  itself,  to 
be  desirable,  or  because  they  have  sufficient  enthusiasm 
for  it  to  overcome  their  misgivings,  but  because  they 
regard  it  as  part  of  a  general  political  progress.  To 
satisfy  their  minds  on  this  ground  they  do  not  need 
to  carry  them  beyond  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  Then 
the  lower  middle  classes  were  enfranchised;  in  1867 
and  1884  the  Franchise  was  further  extended;  Man- 
hood Suffrage  is  now  almost  as  good  as  an  accom- 
plished fact ;  and  the  extension  of  the  franchise  to 
women  thus  seems  to  them  to  be  merely  the  com- 
pletion of  the  movement  of  political  enfranchisement 
and  the  last  stage  in  the  realisation  of  a  perfect 
democracy — or,  I  should  say,  of  a  perfect  democratic 
form  of  government. 

This  is  a  short  cut  to  an  approval  of  the  creed,  and 
undoubtedly  accounts  for  the  majority  of  conversions 
among  men.  But  this  view  obviously  ignores  alto- 
gether the  consideration  that  permeates  the  entire 
case  against  the  creed — the  consideration  that  man 
and  woman  are  as  different  in  their  social  functions 
as  they  are  in  their  physical  structure.  The  short 
cut  which  allows  for  no  foot  to  be  put  upon  this 
widely  disputed  territory  of  sexual  difference  is  clearly 
an  entirely  untrustworthy  path  to  take.  It  is  as  though 
two  persons,  debating  whether  they  should  each  take 
part  in  a  walk  to  Brighton,  took  notice  only  of  the  fact 
that  other  men  had  performed  the  same  pedestrian 
feat,  and  ignored  altogether  their  own  particular  and 
relative  fitness  for  the  ordeal — their  age,  training  and 
physical  efficiency.  And  to  the  man  who  does  not 
allow  himself  to  think  of  what  is  involved  in  the 
assertion  that  woman  is  entitled  to  the  franchise  because 
man  has  secured  it,  that  short-cut  is  the  obvious  and 
easy  way  to  a  whole-hearted  support  of  the  case. 


SCOPE  OF  THE  QUESTION  5 


The  "Superficial"  View. 

But  the  same  short-cut  is  taken  even  by  those 
whose  function  it  is  to  instruct  such  people  as  do 
not  stop  to  think.  A  writer  in  The  Nation,  dwelHng 
on  the  difficulty  of  discussing  social-sexual  questions 
because  of  the  passions  they  arouse,  remarked  (May 
27,  191 1):  "Even  the  comparatively  superficial  issue 
of  the  political  franchise,  which  might  appear  capable 
of  discussion  and  solution  on  plain  principles  of 
democracy  without  any  stirring  of  the  social  depths, 
is  seen  to  excite  counter  -  currents  of  emotional  ex- 
citement exceeding  any  other  of  our  time."  Well, 
the  counter-currents  of  emotional  excitement  aroused 
by  those  who  oppose  the  cause  are  nothing  to  those 
currents  of  emotional  excitement  produced  by  those 
who  stand  for  the  cause,  and  for  that  at  any  rate  we 
can  be  thankful.  But  it  is  not  the  issue  that  is 
"superficial,"  comparatively  or  otherwise;  what  is 
superficial  is  the  notion  that  it  is  so.  The  fact 
that  it  stirs  such  emotional  depths  is  rather  for  its 
supporters  to  apologise  for  than  complain  about,  but 
assuredly  the  state  of  mind  which  regards  Woman 
Suffrage  as  a  superficial  issue  is  not  going  to  stir 
any  intellectual  "  depths,"  though  those  also  have  to 
be  sounded  before  we  touch  bottom. 

But  to  the  plain  man  who  takes  this  short-cut  on 
his  own  initiative,  and  not  through  the  instruction  of 
more  intellectual  authorities,  I  would  merely  commend, 
at  this  stage,  the  reflections  :  (i)  That  if  political  power 
were  as  natural  an  attribute  of  women  as  it  is  of  men, 
they  would  not  have  had  to  wait  until  so  late  in  the 
day  for  an  acknowledgment  of  it  ;  and  (2)  that  the 
causes,  whatever  they  be,  which  have  hitherto  ex- 
cluded women  from  political  power,  may  still  justly 
operate  in  continuance  of  that  exclusion.  No  one 
will  be  so  fatuous  as  to  deny  the  arguable  quality  of 
those  propositions,  but  once  they  are  admitted  to  be 
even  debateable,  away  at  a  breath  goes  the  "  super- 
ficial "  theory.  For  the  answer  is  not  (to  anticipate 
the  only  answer  I  can  imagine  to  either  proposition) 


6  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


that  woman  has  been  kept  out  of  political  power  until 
the  twentieth  century  for  the  same  reason  that  the 
working  man  was  kept  out  of  political  power  until 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth,  viz.,  the  fact  that  political 
progress  had  not  before  reached  him.  That  is  at  best 
but  arguing  in  a  circle,  but  that  answer  is  vitiated 
entirely  by  the  fact  that  political  power  has  resided, 
under  many  different  forms  of  government,  in  the 
hands  of  men  as  a  sex  ;  and  the  establishment  of 
democratic  forms  of  government  has  only  distributed 
power  more  fairly  amongst  the  social  classes  of  men. 

The  "Democratic" 
Argument. 

But  the  argument  that  the  extension  of  political 
power  to  women  is  now  the  next  step  in  the  march  of 
democratic  progress  has  to  be  met.  It  might  be  met  in 
one  direct  way  (if  a  man  could  now  be  found  with  the 
courage  of  anti-democratic  sentiments)  by  denying  the 
necessary  virtue  of  democratic  forms  of  government  at 
all.  But  this  is  not  an  age  in  which  such  a  denial  could 
be  profitably  made  in  controversy,  for  the  man  who 
made  it  would  put  himself  out  of  court.  An  oblique 
answer,  however,  might  be  made  by  the  man  who, 
though  faithful  to  the  democratic  principle  of  govern- 
ment so  far  as  his  experience  of  its  operation  enabled 
him  to  approve  of  it,  nevertheless  put  forward  this 
reservation  :  that  a  democratic  principle  which  involved 
the  admission,  and  the  eventual  predominance,  of 
woman  in  the  control  of  the  State  would  be  a  worse 
evil  than  a  form  of  government  which  fell  short  of  the 
democratic  principle.  Or,  to  put  it  in  another  way  :  If 
the  democratic  principle,  carried  to  its  logical  human 
conclusion,  is  to  land  us  into  a  state  of  society  which, 
whether  it  be  on  a  democratic  basis  or  not,  would  not 
be  a  good  state  of  society,  then  the  democratic  prin- 
ciple had  better  not  be  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion. 

But  there  is  a  third  position  to  be  taken  up,  and  it  is 
not  a  dogmatic  one,  opposing  the  dogma  of  democracy 
by  a  dogma  of  any  other  kind,  but  an  agnostic  position, 


SCOPE  OF  THE  QUESTION  7 


It  simply  submits  the  proposition  for  calm  considera- 
tion that  everything  which  is  new  may  not  be  pro- 
gressive, in  the  beneficent  sense  of  the  word,  whether  it 
be  done  in  the  name  of  the  democratic  principle  or  any 
other  ;  and  that  it  may  be  possible,  in  political  develop- 
ment as  in  every  other  human  activity  in  which  Free 
Will  can  operate,  for  human  society  to  take  a  wrong 
turn.  For  the  use  of  the  word  "  progress "  may  in 
itself  create  an  illusion.  The  human  race  cannot  see 
whither  it  is  going — it  moves  only  from  one  expedient 
to  another  in  search  of  ultimate  happiness  and  final 
truth.  But  can  we  be  sure  that  every  road  which  has 
never  been  trodden  before,  though  it  seem  merely  an 
extension  of  a  given  path,  of  necessity  carries  us  on- 
ward ?  May  we  not  be  diverging  when  we  think  we 
are  progressing  ?  Are  we  to  accept  the  Socratic  idea 
that  all  good  is  voluntary,  and  so  argue  that  the  mere 
fact  of  voluntarily  conferring  political  power  on  women, 
in  the  name  and  in  the  intention  of  progress,  establishes 
that  proceeding  as  a  salutary  step  ? 

The  "  Democratic  "  Bigot. 

That  attitude  of  mind  is  at  least  an  unprovocative 
attitude.  It  eschews  dogmatism  and  the  confidence  of 
partisanship,  and  speaks  only  in  the  accents  of  a 
consciousness  of  common  human  frailty.  Nevertheless, 
I  fear  there  are  many  to  whom  that  attitude  will  not 
appeal,  and  who  will  view  with  the  contempt  of  loftier 
minds  any  controversialist  who  does  not  share  their 
cocksure  faith  in  the  saving  grace  of  Predestined 
Progress,  and  who  allows  himself  any  questionings  of 
whether  human  error  may  not  creep  even  into  "  pro- 
gressive "  politics. 

The  case  of  such  zealots  is,  from  my  point  of  view, 
blankly  hopeless.  But  there  is  one  advantage  about 
a  hopeless  case,  and  that  is  that  you  know  it  is  beyond 
your  skill,  and  you  simply  give  it  up.  To  the  man  who 
is  hypnotised  by  the  very  words  "  Democracy  "  and 
"  Progress,"  so  hypnotised  that  he  cannot  distinguish 
the  thing  from  the  name,  arguments  are  useless.  He 


8 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


holds  an  impregnable  position,  buttressed  by  his  own 
outworks  of  unreason.  There  are,  as  we  know,  certain 
evangelists  who  go  into  the  gospel  "  not  for  their 
health,"  but  frankly  for  the  dollars,  frankly  enough,  at 
anyrate,  for  the  discerning.  But  these  men  escape 
criticism  because  timid  people  are  afraid  to  distinguish 
between  what  is  religion  and  what  is  business.  As  they 
speak  in  the  accents  of  orthodox  religion,  they  remain 
unchallenged  by  people  who  think  it  impious  even  to 
expose  hypocrisy  practised  in  the  name  of  religion, 
which  is  supposed  to  sanctify  even  those  who  make  a 
mockery  of  it.  So  it  is  with  those  people  who  think  it 
impious  to  look  the  words  "  Democracy "  and  "  Pro- 
gress" in  the  face.  You  may  be  challenging  the 
thing,  but  you  touch  the  sacred  names,  and  hence- 
forth are  among  the  unprogressive  and  undemocratic 
damned. 

And  perhaps  it  is  natural  that  those  people  who 
reduce  the  science  of  life  mainly  to  political  terms,  and 
who  register  progress  only  by  parliamentary  enactment, 
should  be  impatient  at  the  suggestion  that  the  ex- 
tension of  political  power  to  a  hitherto  unenfranchised 
body  of  human  beings  is  not  necessarily  a  progressive 
act,  and  that  there  may  be  restraining  considerations 
that  transcend  even  the  importance  of  feeding  the 
political  machine.  By  those  who  live  mainly  in  a 
political  atmosphere,  and  who  apply  the  standard  of 
concrete  legislative  accomplishment  to  human  progress, 
the  diffidence  and  humility  that  question  even  some 
applications  of  one's  own  creed  are  looked  upon  with 
much  less  indulgence  than  direct  and  inveterate  opposi- 
tion. All  the  odium  of  being  what  is  picturesquely 
called  "a  backslider"  attaches  to  you.  And  if  you 
make  any  reservations  about  wherein  "  progress "  lies, 
and  of  what  democracy  consists,  and  where  we  are 
"  progressing "  to,  you  are  told  that  at  last  you  have 
revealed  yourself  as  the  fearful  reactionary  you  have 
always  been  suspected  of  being,  and  really  ought  to  go 
and  live  in  Russia.  You  may  deny  not  only  the 
wisdom,  but  the  very  existence  of  God  ;  but  you 


SCOPE  OF  THE  QUESTION  9 


question  at  your  peril  the  omniscient  beneficence  of  the 
"  progressive  spirit  "  in  politics. 

Nevertheless,  that  impiety  must  be  risked  in  con- 
sidering the  case  of  Woman  Suffrage.  It  may  be  that 
it  is  purely  and  simply  the  development  of  political 
freedom,  as  Mill  thought ;  but  what  is  certain  is  that  no 
man  can  say  it  is  that,  and  nothing  more,  with  any 
confidence.  What  is  equally  certain  is  that  it  is  quite 
as  possible  that  the  extension  of  the  franchise  to 
women,  with  its  sanction  for  fresh  departures  by  women 
in  so  many  directions,  may  have  far-reaching  con- 
sequences that  will  induce  some  future  generations 
to  stampede  hurriedly  on  a  deliberately  reactionary 
path,  and  seek,  perhaps  vainly,  to  undo  what  has  been 
done  in  the  blind  pursuit  of  progress  by  people  "  ani- 
mated with  the  zeal  of  the  progressive  spirit." 

Man  and  the  Race. 

Of  course,  it  is  really  a  question  of  Free  Will  and 
Predestination  all  over  again,  but  in  the  secular  sphere. 
Is  it  given  to  man  in  the  political  community  to  have 
the  same  responsibility  of  choice  in  his  political  actions 
as  is  given  him  as  an  individual  ?  We  know  that  the 
individual  man  may  make  false  steps  that  ruin  his 
individual  career  or  character.  Is  it  not  possible  that 
political  man  may  take  false  steps  that  will  injure  and 
even  ruin  his  race  ? 

I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  the  possibility  ;  or  to  doubt 
that  the  false  step  may  be  taken  even  in  the  name  of 
progress.  It  is  in  fact  much  more  likely  that  such  a 
step  would  be  taken  from  good  motives  united  to  bad 
judgment  than  in  any  other  way.  Indeed,  one  cannot 
imagine  man,  considered  as  society,  hastening  the 
doom  or  decay  of  the  race  by  any  conscious  and 
deliberate  intention.  But  the  question  is  whether 
he  may  not  have  it  in  his  power  to  affect  adversely  the 
course  of  the  human  race  by  adopting  some  rash  and 
heedless  experiment  such  as  is  involved  in  changing 
the  position  of  woman  by  giving  her  political  power 
and  encouraging  her  to  gain  economic  independence 

B 


10  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


and  to  take  an  equal  part  with  him,  on  equal  terms,  in 
the  "struggle  for  life." 

One  ultimate  consequence  of  this  "  liberation,"  would 
be  the  evolution  of  another  type  of  woman  than  that 
of  to-day.  For  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  woman 
is  going  to  follow  man's  pursuits  and  take  her  part  in 
the  rough  and  tumble  of  the  world — not  only  the  world 
of  politics,  as  we  shall  see — without  approximating 
herself  to  his  characteristics.  Even  to-day  there  is  a 
new  note  of  masculine  strenuousness  and  assertiveness 
in  woman  as  the  result  of  her  freer  movement  in  the 
world,  and  it  is  only  reasonable  to  suppose  that  after, 
say,  three  centuries  of  "  equality  "  with  man  she  would 
have  developed  masculine  traits  up  to  the  point  where 
Nature  bars  the  way  by  the  final  and  essential  fact  of 
sex.  And  side  by  side  with  this  approximation  to 
masculine  characteristics  there  would  be  a  correspond- 
ing decline  of  those  traits  which  now  we  speak  of  as 
"  womanly."  We  may  go  even  further,  and  say  that 
it  is  highly  probable  that  there  would  be  a  correspond- 
ing variation  in  the  characteristics  of  man.  A  race  of 
men  born  of  several  generations  of  mothers  competing 
with  men  and  each  other  in  the  struggle  for  life  (which 
even  an  optimist  may  expect  to  be  still  in  progress 
three  hundred  years  hence)  and  a  race  of  men,  moreover, 
who  are  no  longer  the  protectors  of  women,  but  their 
rivals  and  "  equals,"  is  not  likely  to  be  a  race  of  men 
that  has  altered  for  the  better,  judged  by  our  standard 
of  the  qualities  that  constitute  masculinity.  We  may 
therefore  arrive  at  the  production  of  a  race  of  men  and 
women  who  are  utterly  unlike  the  men  and  women 
of  our  conception  and  experience  to-day.  • 

Several  answers  may  be  made  to  this  exercise  in 
forecasting  the  possibilities  of  a  modification  of  men  and 
women  by  the  operation  of  all  that  is  implied  in 
Woman  Suffrage  and  that  lies  beyond  it.  There  is, 
first,  that  of  the  man  who  regards  the  modern  woman's 
movement  as  a  "  superficial  "  issue,  a  mere  matter  of 
franchise  ;  of  marking  a  ballot  paper  ;  of  reading  the 
political  leaders  in  the  newspapers  ;  of  making  occas- 


SCOPE  OF  THE  QUESTION  ii 


ional  speeches  ;  and  of  joining  one  or  two  of  the 
thousand  and  one  societies  and  leagues  that  will  spring 
into  existence,  as  the  first  organised  step  in  the  general 
and  political  regeneration  of  society  that  is  to  follow 
woman's  advent  into  the  political  sphere.  But  that 
answer  need  not  detain  us.  The  mind  that  does  not 
grasp  the  possibilities  of  the  forces  that  would  be 
liberated  by  a  wholesale  change  in  the  status  of  woman 
is  too  shallow  to  be  considered — though  it  is  really  a 
dangerous  type  of  mind — in  any  serious  argument. 

Man  and 
Natural  Laws. 

Another  answer  is  that  whatever  type  of  man  oi 
woman  may  be  evolved  by  the  operation  of  sex  equality 
will  be  evolved  in  accordance  with  Nature's  own  plan  ; 
and  a  third  is  that  if  it  be  found  that  the  new  order 
contravenes  Nature's  plan  and  threatens  the  race, 
Nature  will  reassert  herself,  and  we  shall  beat  a  hasty  re- 
treat, and  shall  have  had  our  lesson.  In  a  matter  where- 
upon no  man  may  dogmatise,  we  can  only  say  that  the 
latter  contingency  is  at  least  probable.  There  has  never 
before  been  a  campaign  of  feminism  such  as  that  which 
to-day  spreads  from  Russia  over  Northern  Europe  and 
from  Turkey  over  the  Latin  countries  to  the  United 
States  of  America.  And  the  human  race  has  absolutely 
no  experience  to  guide  it  in  endeavouring  to  estimate 
the  consequences,  immediate  and  remote,  of  the  political 
equality  and  economic  self-sufficiency  of  woman.  But 
it  is  quite  likely  that  the  experiment  may  have  to  be 
made  as  part  of  the  general  sardonic  plan,  so  that  the 
theories  of  men  may  be  rebuked.  It  is  quite  likely 
that  the  race  will  have  to  pass  through  the  experience 
in  order  that  it  may  gain  the  knowledge. 

But,  in  speculating  upon  forces  and  conditions  con- 
cerning which  there  is  no  precedent  or  knowledge  to 
guide  us,  we  may  also  wonder  whether  man  will  have 
the  opportunity  to  retrace  his  steps,  and  to  repair  the 
mischief  after  Nature's  admonition.  Nature  is  not  a 
kindly  old  dame  who  preaches  homilies  to  man  and 


12 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


reasons  with  him  on  his  perversity.  She  is  a  ruthless 
force,  exacting  her  penalty  ;  and  her  lessons  are  learned 
only  when  it  is  often  too  late  to  profit  by  them.  The 
notion  that  no  race  of  men  and  women  can  be  evolved 
which  is  not  in  accordance  with  Nature's  plan  is  a 
cheery  form  of  fatalism  which  overlooks  altogether 
the  ability  of  man  to  break  Nature's  laws.  Yet  the 
argument  is  often  used  that  any  fear  of  woman's  en- 
franchisement producing  a  race  of  men  and  women 
who  will  depart  unnaturally  from  the  present  types 
of  the  race,  is  grotesque.  Anything  within  the  realm 
of  Nature  is  "  natural,"  is  the  contention,  and  Nature's 
purpose  cannot  be  perverted  by  man. 

A  thousand  examples  in  the  physical  world  confute 
that  notion,  which  is  just  the  notion  on  which  Suffra- 
gists rely  when  some  of  the  possible  changes  in  the 
race  that  may  result  from  woman's  general  "  liberation  " 
are  speculated  upon.  One  has  only  to  think  how 
often  and  in  what  connections  the  word  "  unnatural " 
is  used,  to  realise  that  everything  which  is  within  the 
realm  of  man's  physical  possibility  is  not  in  accord  with 
Nature's  plan,  if  we  are  to  assume  that  her  plan  is  that 
her  laws  should  be  obeyed  and  that  her  prime  object 
is  the  preservation  of  the  race. 

If,  then,  the  result  of  women's  enfranchisement, 
with  all  its  sanctions  and  implications,  and  the  en- 
largement of  woman's  activity,  is  to  interfere  with  the 
perpetuation  of  the  race,  we  have  an  example  of  how 
man,  by  his  own  action,  may  be  interfering  with  the 
course  of  Nature. 

The  Long  View. 

The  point  to  be  decided  is  whether  that  enfranchise- 
ment is  likely  to  have  that  effect ;  and  it  is  too  wide 
a  question  for  discussion  in  a  preliminary  chapter. 
But  one  indication  alone  will  suffice  for  the  present 
purpose.  Economic  independence  is  as  much  the 
objective  of  the  movement  as  political  equality  and 
power.  But  it  is  certain  that  economic  independence, 
and  still  more  the  struggle  to  attain  it,  will  diminish 


SCOPE  OF  THE  QUESTION  13 


enormously  both  the  opportunities  and  capacity  for 
the  exercise  of  woman's  maternal  functions  and  duties. 
Let  us  assume  that  the  woman's  movement  in  England 
makes  headway  and  succeeds  in  all  its  aims.  Inspired 
by  such  an  example,  feminism  in  other  countries  will 
assert  itself  to  the  same  degree,  and  it  will  be  only  a 
question  of  time  for  the  movement  to  prevail  among 
all  the  white  races,  that  is  amongst  the  most  pro- 
gressive and  civilised  portion  of  mankind.  The  result 
of  this  widespread  independence  of  woman  would  be, 
with  absolute  certainty,  the  numerical  decrease  of  the 
white  races ;  and  this  would  coincide  with  the  in- 
creasing efficiency  of  coloured  races  all  over  the  world, 
brought  about  by  the  adoption  of  the  industrial  and 
scientific  methods  of  the  white  man.  These  methods, 
however,  are  more  easily  adopted  and  put  into  practice 
than  the  new  ethical  and  political  principles  of  the 
white  races,  and  many  generations  of  coloured  people 
would  live  and  die  before  any  change  took  place  in 
their  own  social  and  racial  characteristics  and  customs. 
To  copy  the  design  of  a  battleship  or  an  aeroplane  is 
an  easier  thing  than  to  copy  either  the  political  genius 
or  the  social  institutions  of  another  race  ;  and  material 
efficiency  is  more  easily  imitable  than  moral  or  political 
principles.  Hence  it  might  well  be  that  just  when 
the  white  races  were  numerically  declining  rapidly, 
through  the  operation  of  the  white  woman's  economic 
independence,  the  coloured  races  were  gaining  a  pre- 
dominant position  on  the  strength  of  the  white 
man's — and  not  the  white  woman's — inventive  and 
mechanical  genius. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  achieve  the  purpose 
of  this  early  chapter,  that  purpose  being  (l)  to  negative 
the  idea  that  the  woman's  movement,  even  so  far  only 
as  it  confines  itself  to  the  demand  for  political  equality, 
is  a  "superficial"  issue  to  be  decided  only  by  the 
principles  of  a  democratic  franchise ;  (2)  to  show 
that  there  is  no  question  concerning  which  it  is 
more  imperative  to  take  the  long  view  ;  and  (3)  to 
show  that  within  a  movement  superficially  considered 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


as  one  of  mere  political  justice  is  the  germ  of  many 
far-reaching  consequences  to  the  race.  What  some 
of  these  consequences  may  be,  viewed  not  speculatively, 
but  upon  the  positive  evidence  of  the  aims  of  the 
woman's  movement,  will  be  seen  hereafter. 


CHAPTER  II. 


The  "Right"  To  A  Vote. 

THE  SUFFRAGISTS'  "  DEMAND  "—GOVERNMENT  AND 
THE  PEOPLE— WHERE  VOTES  COME  FROM — MAN  AND 
THE  VOTE. 


CHAPTER  II. 


The  "Right"  To  A  Vote. 

When  Mr  Asquith  made  his  announcement  to  a 
deputation  in  November,  191 1,  of  the  intention  of 
the  Government  to  introduce  a  Manhood  SuiTrage 
Bill,  and  to  leave  to  the  sense  of  the  House  of 
Commons  any  amendment  that  might  be  moved 
extending  its  provisions  to  women,  there  were  many 
protests  from  the  Suffragists.  Indeed,  not  only  was 
their  language  concerning  the  Prime  Minister  more 
violent  and  more  insolent  than  it  had  ever  been 
before,  but  the  window-smashing  campaign  of  a  few 
nights  afterwards  touched  high-water  mark  for  rowdy- 
ism and  destructiveness.  It  would  seem  that  the  nearer 
they  get  to  their  goal,  the  more  valuable  the  con- 
cessions made  by  politicians  to  their  cause,  the  more 
insensately  violent  they  become  ;  and  when  perfectly 
sane  people  see  this  sort  of  thing,  and  note  that 
prominent  and  indispensable  supporters  of  Woman 
Suffrage  like  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  merely 
continue  to  support  the  cause  as  though  nothing  had 
happened,  sane  people  get  so  bewildered  that  they 
begin  to  doubt  their  own  sanity  in  relation  to  a 
world  which  has  seemed  to  have  lost  or  changed  or 
mislaid  entirely  the  ordinary  standards  of  reason. 
So  I  will  not  pursue  further  the  extraordinary 
situation  that  the  announcement  by  the  Prime 
Minister  that  nothing  stood  between  Suffragism  and 
accomplished  Woman  Suffrage  but  a  Parliament  that 
had  already  voted  in  its  favour,  was  the  signal  for 
the  wildest  outburst  of  disorder  that  the  militant 
section  had  ever  conducted. 


17 


18 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


The  Suffragists'  "Demand." 

But  their  attitude  in  reasoned  speech  towards  the 
Prime   Minister's   concession   is   worth  considering, 
because  it  throws  into  relief  two  important  points  : 
the  first  is,  the  same  lack  of  restraint  in  speech  as 
in  action,  the  same  aberration  from  reason  when  they 
are  discussing  anything  as  when  they  are  merely 
damaging  property ;  and  the  second  is,  their  wholly 
mistaken  notion  that  they  have  a  "  right "  to  a  vote 
at  all.    Miss  Christabel  Pankhurst  will  be  recognised 
as  having  the  authority  to  express  a  representative 
opinion.    "  The  Prime  Minister  suggests,"  she  said, 
"that  a  Woman  Suffrage  amendment  may  be  moved 
to  the  Manhood  Suffrage  Bill,  but  this  suggestion  is 
absolutely  unsatisfactory,  and  is  regarded  as  an  insult 
to  the  intelligence  of  the  Suffragists.    We  demand  that 
the  Government  should  assume  the  same  responsibility 
for  giving  votes  to  women  that  they  now  extend  to 
votes  for  men."    It  is  not  difficult  to  insult  the  in- 
telligence of  Suffragists  ;  what  is  difficult  is  to  flatter 
it.    But  it  is  obvious  to  any  ordinary  intelligence  that 
in  leaving  it  to  the  decision  of  the  House  of  Commons 
whether  woman  should  be  given  votes  or  not,  Mr 
Asquith  was  offering  the  opportunity  of  conferring 
them  to  the  only  body  in  existence  that  could  directly 
confer  them.    When  it  is  further  considered  that  Mr 
Asquith  himself  is  inflexibly  opposed  to  granting  votes 
to  women  at  all  under  any  suffrage,  limited  or  other- 
wise, and  when  it  is  further  remembered  that  the 
Government  of  which  he  is  the  head  includes  at  least 
half-a-dozc  n  men  who  are  exactly  of  his  opinion,  any 
ordinary  intelligence  will  realise  that  Mr  Asquith  was 
going  to  the  limit  not  only  of  personal  effacement,  but 
of  practical  politics.    And  any  ordinary  intelligence 
w^ould  also  appreciate  the  fact  that  Mr  Asquith  was 
going  much  further  than  the  principles  of  his  own 
Government  warrant,  for  that  Government  came  into 
power  to  ensure  that  the  will  of  the  people  should 
prevail ;  and  upon  this  supremely  vital  question  the 
will  of  the  people  has  never  expressed  itself  in  any 


THE  "RIGHT"  TO  A  VOTE  19 


form  that  would  give  not  merely  a  mandate  to 
Parliament,  but  any  indication  of  what  its  opinion  of 
the  principle  of  VVoman  Suffrage  is,  one  way  or  the 
other.  And  therefore  Mr  Asquith,  himself  an  opponent 
of  the  creed,  was  even  straining  the  tactical  position 
against  his  own  convictions,  to  say  nothing  of  straining 
it  against  the  unnumbered  voters  who  are  waiting  for 
an  opportunity  to  express  their  convictions  outside  the 
House  of  Commons  altogether. 

But  Miss  Pankhurst  not  only  described  a  mag- 
nanimous and  even  chivalrous,  and  as  the  event 
may  prove,  even  a  Quixotic  concession,  as  an  insult 
to  the  intelligence  of  the  Suffragists,  but  said  that 
they  demanded  that  the  Government  should  take  the 
same  responsibility  for  giving  votes  to  women  as  they 
took  for  giving  votes  to  unenfranchised  men.  They 
demanded,  that  is  to  say,  that  the  Government  as  a 
collective  body  should  introduce  a  Woman  Suffrage 
Bill  on  their  own  responsibility,  although  the  Govern- 
ment, as  a  collective  body,  is  reduced  to  impotence  on 
that  question  by  the  mere  fact  that  the  individual 
members  composing  it  are  divided  in  opinion,  and 
the  head  of  the  Government  himself,  who  holds  the 
life  of  the  whole  Government  in  his  own  hands,  is 
himself  a  determined,  and,  I  hope  will  prove,  a 
deadly  opponent  of  the  whole  movement. 

Government  and 
the  People. 

Now,  if  a  male  voter  were  to  demand  that  the  same 
Government  should  introduce  a  Tariff  Reform  Budget, 
or  if  a  male  voter  were  to  demand  that  a  Unionist 
Government  should  introduce  a  Home  Rule  Bill  (even 
though  some  of  its  members  might  be  Devolutionists), 
he  would  be  looked  upon  as  a  person  of  imperfect 
intelligence,  but  such  demands  would  be  only  slightly 
more  off  the  plane  of  rationality  and  reality  than  that 
Suffragists  should  demand  that  a  Government  of  which 
the  head  himself  is  an  opponent  of  Woman  Suffrage 
should  bring  in  a  l  ill  to  grant  it.     It  is  the  nearest 


20 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


mundane  equivalent  to  asking  for  the  moon — tliough 
the  moon,  unhappily,  is  at  any  rate  being  dangled 
within  their  reach. 

But  what  can  be  said  of  the  sense  for  politics  of 
women  who  "  demand  "  from  a  Government  that  which 
that  Government  by  the  very  factors  of  its  composition, 
cannot  give  ?  Any  ordinary  intelligence  realises  that 
there  is  only  one  supreme  power  that  could  make  that 
demand  of  the  Government,  and  that  is  the  supreme 
power  of  The  People,  who  have  never  yet  been  asked  to 
say  a  yea  or  a  nay  upon  the  subject ;  and  even  that 
supreme  power  could  not  enforce  its  demand  upon  that 
Government,  for  the  obvious  reason  that  the  head  of  the 
Government,  by  handing  his  resignation  to  the  King, 
might  dissolve  the  Government  into  thin  air  at  any 
time  he  pleased.  Moreover,  even  the  supreme  power 
of  The  People  could  not  formulate  that  demand  until 
the  opportunity  had  been  given  to  it  to  formulate  a 
demand  of  a  totally  opposite  character.  And  the 
homely  proverb,  "  You  may  lead  a  horse  to  the  water, 
but  you  cannot  make  him  drink,"  exactly  and  sanely 
answers  the  Suffragist  ''demand  "  that  the  Government 
shall  take  a  Cabinet  responsibility  for  commending  a 
measure  upon  which  the  Cabinet  has  no  collective 
mind.  But,  leaving  for  further  discussion  and  enlighten- 
ment the  naive  ideas  possessed  by  the  Suffragists  on 
the  parliamentary  procedure  and  political  practice  of 
their  country,  in  which  they  wish  to  bear  a  predominant 
part,  let  us  pay  some  little  attention  to  the  word 
"  demand,"  in  connection  with  the  claim  to  vote. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  demands — that  of  the  high- 
wayman who  demands  your  money,  and  that  of  a  work- 
man who  demands  wages  legally  and  properly  due  for 
work  done,  or  a  tradesman  who  demands  money  for 
goods  supplied.  One  is  the  demand  that  has  nothing 
but  temporary  physical  force  behind  it,  and  the  other  is 
the  demand  of  a  moral  right,  sanctioned  and  converted 
into  a  legal  right  by  the  law  of  the  land.  The  demand 
for  a  vote,  however,  may  partake  of  something  of  the 
nature  of  both  of  these  demands.  It  may  be  backed  by 


THE  "RIGHT"  TO  A  VOTE  21 


such  force  as  would  overawe  a  Government  unsupported 

by  the  sovereign  people  (though  no  amount  of  force 
could  overawe  a  Government  supported  by  the  people, 
for  the  people  itself  would  also  have  to  be  overawed), 
and  it  may  be  backed  by  such  an  expression  of  the 
popular  will  as  would  make  even  the  threat  of  force 
absurdly  unnecessary  in  a  political  system  such  as  ours, 
in  which  rebellion  by  the  executive  against  the  sover- 
eign people  is  no  longer  practical  politics.  But  the 
demand  of  any  section  of  the  population  for  a  vote,  un- 
backed either  by  force  to  overawe  a  Government  or  by 
the  moral  support  of  the  sovereign  people,  is  a  demand 
made  to  the  winds — apart  from  the  almost  inconceiv- 
able yet  apparently  probable  contingency  that  a  Parlia- 
ment elected  to  vindicate  the  will  of  the  people  might 
ignore  the  will  of  the  people  altogether.  Votes  have 
been  demanded,  and  secured,  when  both  these  elements 
have  been  present — the  one  implicit  and  the  other 
actual — but  no  votes  can  ever  be  secured,  whatever  be 
demanded,  if  neither  of  these  elements  is  effectively 
present — short,  again,  of  a  Parliament  willing  to  sell 
the  pass. 

Where  Votes 
Come  From. 

And  now,  after  showing  that  votes  can  be  got  only 
where  votes  come  from,  we  have  cleared  the  ground 
for  considering  the  proposition  that  nobody  has  an 
abstract  right  to  demand  any  vote  whatever. 

Let  us  think  for  a  moment  what  a  vote  is.  It  is  the 
expedient  adopted  for  securing  the  participation  of 
many  minds  and  men  in  a  Government — that  and 
nothing  more.  In  our  own  country  (which  is  the  only 
country  that  need  concern  us  in  this  matter  at  all)  a 
vote  is  the  outcome  of  centuries  of  struggle — against 
monarchical  absolutism,  against  feudal  and  aristocratic 
supremacy,  and  against  class  privilege.  But  no  English- 
man was  born  with  a  natural  right  to  a  vote  any  more 
than  he  was  born  with  a  natural  right  to  a  job  in  the 
Civil  Service,     Even  when  manhood  suffrage  is  an 


22 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


accomplished  fact  he  will  be  born  only  to  the  statutory 
right  to  have  a  vote  when  he  attains  adult  age.  He 
gets  his  vote,  in  short,  by  statutory  law,  that  is  to  say, 
ultimately,  by  the  will  of  the  people.  And  that  statu- 
tory right  might  be  statutorily  taken  away  from  him — 
still  by  the  sovereign  people.  If  he  commits  a  felony, 
for  instance,  the  statutory  right  is  taken  away  the 
moment  he  is  convicted  of  it.  The  concession  of  a  v'ote 
to  adult  male  citizens  is  now  so  admittedly  the  prin- 
ciple upon  which  a  democratic  State  should  be  built  up, 
that  a  proposal  is  to  come  before  Parliament  to  extend 
the  vote  to  all  adult  males,  and  men  have  bad  to  wait 
for  a  vote,  as  a  statutory  and  not  a  natural  right  upon 
attaining  an  adult  age,  until  the  first  Parliament 
of  the  fifth  George,  although  the  political  instrument 
called  a  vote  has  existed  in  England  for  some  seven 
centuries. 

But  just  as  a  vote  is  the  expression  of  a  democratic 
state,  so  a  democratic  state — a  state  in  which  supreme 
power  is  conferred  upon  the  voters — might  at  any  time 
take  away  the  vote  from  any  section  of  itself  not  strong 
enough  to  outvote  the  rest.  Democracies,  like  auto- 
cracies, have  their  caprices,  and  if  the  English  de- 
mocracy were  some  day  to  take  it  into  its  head  that 
red-haired  people  were  unfit  to  exercise  the  franchise, 
no  power  in  the  constitution  could  secure  to  red-haired 
men  (who,  I  believe,  are  in  a  distinct  minority)  the 
continuance  of  a  vote.  But  in  a  democratic  state, 
sanely  conducted,  the  giving  or  the  withholding  of  a 
vote  depends  in  practice  upon  the  will  of  the  people, 
as  affected  not  by  caprice  but  by  the  rational  consider- 
ation of  the  desirability  or  otherwise  of  conferring  or 
withholding  the  privilege.  And  that  is  just  how  the 
matter  stands  with  regard  to  Votes  for  Women.  If 
Suffragists  want  votes,  it  is  of  the  sovereign  people 
that  they  must  ask  them,  and  not  of  a  Government 
which  has  not  the  collective  willingness  of  its  own 
wisdom  either  to  grant  or  to  refuse  them  ;  and  not  of  a 
Parliament  elected  to  vindicate  the  will  of  the  sovereign 
peo  )le,  which  has  no  moral  right  whatever  to  bestow 


THE  "RIGHT"  TO  A  VOTE  23 


them,  though  it  may  bestow  them  by  an  act  of  treason 
to  the  people. 

Man  and  the  Vote. 

But  not  only  is  a  vote  the  artificial  creation  of  cen- 
turies of  political  evolution — it  is  the  special  creation 
of  men.  It  is  through  the  direct  action  of  men  alone 
that  such  a  form  of  government  has  been  evolved  as 
to  bring  into  existence  such  a  thing  as  a  vote.  If  it  be 
said  that  women  may  claim  an  indirect  part  in  the  long 
struggle  which  has  produced  such  a  thing  as  a  vote, 
because  they  helped  to  produce  the  men  who  created 
it,  the  answer  is  that  they  may  still  go  on  playing  the 
same  indirect  political  part,  and  that  they  may  still 
go  on,  as  man's  helpmate,  doing  for  him  and  through 
him  for  the  State  now  that  he  has  a  vote,  just  those 
things  they  did  for  him  and  through  him  for  the  State 
whilst  he  was  engaged  in  the  political  and  material 
work  which  has  culminated  in  the  vote.  But  it  is  of 
the  men  that  women  must  demand  their  votes.'  If  a 
plebiscite  of  the  women  of  England  revealed  that  every 
woman  demanded  the  vote,  it  would  still  be  a  reproach 
to  the  masculine  mind  of  man  if  he  conceded  that  de- 
mand against  his  own  convictions  of  its  desirability, 
though  it  is  certain  that  he  would  concede  it  even  if 
his  misgivings  went  along  with  it.  But  the  assumption 
that  a  small  section  of  women,  of  unascertained  di- 
mensions, but  extreme  persistence,  can  "  demand  "  the 
votes  over  the  heads  and  behind  the  backs  of  the  entire 
male  electorate  is  an  assumption  (even  though  it  be 
sanctioned  by  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  him- 
self) insufferable  to  everything  but  the  meekest 
masculinity.  But  the  Suffragists  do  not  appear  to 
have  grasped  the  function  of  an  electorate  in  a  demo- 
cratic state.  It  may  be  willing  to  be  convinced,  but 
it  is  not  willing  to  be  ignored. 

'At  Dublin  Miss  Christabel  Pankhurst  said  (October,  191 1)  that 
Suffragists  did  not  admit  that  they  had  to  ask  men  for  the  vote  at 
all. 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Three  points,  I  hope,  have  now  been  made  cleai 
with  regard  to  the  vote.  The  first  is  that  it  is 
nobody's  natural  right,  but  a  right  created  only  by 
law,  the  power  behind  the  law  in  a  democratic  state 
being  the  power  of  the  vote  itself ;  the  second  is  that 
it  is  the  creation  of  the  struggles  of  men  ;  and  the 
third  is  that  it  is  the  existing  holders  of  the  vote, 
who  are  men,  who  alone  have  the  power  to  say 
whether  it  shall  be  extended  to  women.  But  the 
right  acquired  in  a  vote  implies  certain  duties  to  be 
performed.  If  it  has  been  confined  to  men  hitherto, 
that  has  been  because  men,  by  their  nature,  achieve- 
ments and  services  to  the  state,  possess  an  aptitude 
and  a  qualification  for  the  discharge  of  the  duties 
concerned  with  a  vote  which  justify  their  possession 
of  it,  though  the  fact  that  they  created  it  and  conferred 
it  on  themselves  is  their  original  justification  for  pos- 
sessing it.  And  the  next  stage  of  thr  matter  is  to 
consider  whether  women  possess,  as  a  sex  and  not 
exceptionally,  the  same  aptitude  and  the  same  quali- 
fications for  exercising  the  vote  as  the  men,  and  the 
same  justification  for  possessing  it  ;  or  what  are  the 
differences  between  men  and  women  which  make  it 
desirable  or  otherwise  that  women  should  be  admitted 
to  the  right  that  man  has  won  for  himself. 


CHAPTER  III. 


The  Road  Begun  By  The  First  Step. 

VOTES  FOR  ALL  WOMEN  IF  FOR  ANY — WOMEN  IN 
PARLIAMENT— WOMEN  ON  THE  BENCH— THE  RE- 
ACTION. 


i 


CHAPTER  III. 


The  Road  Begun  By  The  First  Step. 

The  vote  is  claimed  for  women  chiefly  on  the  ground 
that  it  is  a  logical  extension  of  the  vote  given  to  men. 
Logic,  however,  is  not  always  to  be  trusted  in  human 
affairs,  for  nothing  is  more  illogical  than  human  nature, 
which  is  the  parent  of  all  human  institutions,  even 
political  ones.  And  there  is  a  sanity  of  things  more 
trustworthy  even  than  the  logic  of  things  ;  as  we  may 
often  find  by  the  mere  expedient  of  carrying  a  given 
line  of  conduct  to  its  logical  conclusion,  and  seeing 
into  what  a  bog  of  difficulty  it  lands  us. 

But  the  claim  that  women  are  entitled  to  a  vote  as 
a  consequence  of  the  fact  that  men  possess  them 
depends,  even  as  a  logical  proposition,  on  the  correct- 
ness of  the  implied  premiss  that  meu  and  women  are, 
in  respect  of  political  aptitude,  the  same  sort  of  human 
being.  "  Man,"  said  Aristotle,  "  is  a  political  animal." 
But  is  woman  ?  The  first  thing  to  do,  then,  is  to 
establish  the  difference  between  man  and  woman  as 
political  animals,  and  if  that  can  be  done  to  the  extent 
of  showing  that  the  political  aptitude  of  the  one  has 
no  corresponding  existence  in  the  other,  then  the  fact 
that  men  have  votes  gives  no  support  whatever  to 
women's  claim  to  have  votes.  So  that  if  woman  be 
given  a  vote,  it  will  have  to  be  given  on  other  grounds 
entirely  ;  but  if  there  are  no  other  grounds  in  reason 
and  expediency  to  justify  it,  then  the  claim  falls  to 
the  ground  even  when  shifted  on  to  another  leg. 

Votes  for  all  Women 
if  for  Any. 

And  in  considering  this  question  there  is  only  one 
assumption  upon  which  it  is  reasonable  to  proceed, 

27 


28  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


and  that  is  that  if  any  women  receive  votes,  all  will 
receive  them,  and  that  women  will  not  end  their 
political  activity  as  voters,  but  will  extend  themselves 
over  the  whole  political  and  official  sphere,  just  as  men 
now  do.  Any  other  assumption  is  futile  and  profit- 
less, and  is  looking  only  to  the  next  two  or  three  years, 
instead  of  the  next  twenty  and  fifty. 

I  know  that  many  men  in  favour  of  granting  the 
franchise,  and  many  women  who  claim  it,  endeavour 
to  reassure  themselves  and  the  prudent  that  all  that 
is  involved  in  this  claim  is  that  a  woman  should  take 
a  fairly  intelligent  interest  in  the  general  drift  of 
politics,  and  make  a  mark  on  a  piece  of  paper  once 
in  every  three  or  four  years.  But,  pointing  out  in 
passing  that  this  fanciful  limitation  in  itself  constitutes 
an  admission  that  men  and  women  are  not  the  same 
kind  of  being,  let  me  proceed  to  make  it  clear  that 
that  limitation  could  not  be  maintained  for  more  than 
a  few  years  after  the  first  critical  step — the  step  that 
counts — had  been  taken. 

If  one  woman  receives  the  vote,  as  a  woman,  every 
woman  will  eventually  get  it.  Already  its  advocates 
have  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  asking  that  women  of 
property  only  shall  be  enfranchised.  The  Conser- 
vatives would  naturally  be  content — if  they  looked 
only  to  base  party  advantage' — by  a  partial  solution 

'  Happily  the  indications  are  that  the  Conservative  party  will 
take  a  perfectly  honest  attitude  on  this  question,  and  not  de- 
grade itself  by  fishing  in  troubled  Liberal  waters.  Mr  F.  E. 
Smith,  writing  in  the  January  number  of  the  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  Review,  promises  to  support  Mr  Asquith  "in  any 
circumstances  against  any  combination  of  politicians  who 
attempt  to  establish  Female  Suffrage  in  any  form,  modified 
or  extreme."  That  spirit  is  echoed  by  Liberal  anti-suffragists. 
The  position  of  anti-suffragists,  in  fact,  whether  Liberal  or 
Conservative,  is  that  all  other  political  divisions  and  questions 
become  subordinate  to  this  question,  which  transcends  even  the 
division  between  the  Liberal  and  the  Conservative  mind.  And 
if  a  Liberal  Parliament  passed  Woman  Suffrage  whilst  in 
possession  of  a  majority  given  them  to  uphold  the  will  of 
the  people,  then  e\  eiy  honest  Liberal  would  be  driven  to  admit 
that  the  absolute  veto  of  the  Lords  was  destroyed  by  a  Parlia- 


THE  FIRST  STEP 


29 


of  the  matter  that  reinforced  their  own  strength  ;  but 
they  know  quite  well  that  once  the  principle  of  sex- 
equality  in  the  franchise  is  allowed,  women  will  receive 
votes  on  the  same  terms  as  men  ;  and  men  are  doubt- 
less about  to  receive  votes  on  the  strength  of  adult 
age.  If  women  get  votes  at  all,  then  all  adult  women 
will  get  votes  ;  and  at  the  time  of  writing  these  words 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  has  intimated  his 
willingness  himself  to  move  the  amendment  that  will 
secure  an  adult  franchise  to  women.  But  it  would  be 
impossible,  indeed,  to  defend  for  long  any  anomalous 
differentiation  between  the  two  franchises.  For  logic 
alone  would  then  guide  the  course  of  the  stream,  once 
logic  had  made  the  first  breach  through  which  the 
waters  burst.  It  is  clear  as  day  that  if  women  are  to 
receive  votes  because  men  have  got  them,  they  will 
receive  votes  on  precisely  the  same  technical  quali- 
fication as  men  possess.  The  end  of  the  first  stage 
would  therefore  be  adult  suffrage  for  women. 

Women  in  Parliament. 

The  next  stage  would  be  the  claim  and  clamour  of 
women  to  enter  Parliament.  No  argument  could  stand 
a  year's  attack  of  the  anomalous  distinction  which 
excluded  women  from  the  House  of  Commons  or  even 
the  House  of  Lords.  They  would  say,  and  rightly, 
"Our  wisdom  is  consulted  by  candidates  for  Parlia- 
ment ;  we  are  allowed  to  make  the  candidates  into 
members  of  Parliament  ;  but  we  are  denied  the  choice 
of  a  single  member  of  our  sex  to  represent  the  interests 
of  millions  of  women  in  Parliament  itself  !  How  much 
longer  are  we  to  be  asked  to  endure  this  insult  to  our 
intelligence,  this  degradation  of  our  sex,  this  crying 

ment  lost  to  all  sense  of  honour.  He  would  also  be  driven  to 
admit  that  when  the  Conservatives  contended  that  the  sub- 
jugation of  the  Lords  left  the  way  clear  to  the  Commons  to 
betray  the  people,  the  Conservative  knew  better  than  the 
Liberal.  But  even  the  Conservative  did  not  warn  us  that  the 
betrayal  might  come  from  the  very  Parliament  that  scorned 
that  general  warning  as  a  malignant  party  cry. 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


injustice  to  our  interests,  this  musty  survival  of  a  fly- 
blown sex  prejudice,  this  last  remnant  of  man's  arro- 
gance ?  "  What  could  any  one  say  in  reply  to  such  a 
case,  when  the  original  position  of  political  equality  had 
once  been  conceded  ?  There  would  be  nothing  what- 
ever to  be  said.  I,  at  any  rate,  cannot  think  of  any 
conceivable  answer  to  it,  once  the  vote  were  given,  that 
I  could  make  with  any  respect  for  my  intelligence. 
Nay,  not  only  should  I  be  unable  to  oppose  it,  but  I 
should  give  it  my  positive  support  if  only  that,  after 
the  deluge,  I  might  derive  what  sardonic  satisfaction  I 
could  from  the  development ;  and,  feeling  that  posterity 
might  look  after  itself  so  far  as  I  was  concerned,  since 
my  own  generation  had  ignored  its  claims,  I  should 
settle  down  to  extract  out  of  the  situation  the  com- 
pensation of  a  spectacle  that  would  cynically  divert  me 
in  my  declining  days. 

The  second  stage,  then,  would  be  the  admission  of 
women  into  Parliament. 

Thereafter,  the  tragi -comedy  would  move  swiftly 
through  its  succeeding  phases.  Once  in  Parliament, 
women  would  claim  to  enter  the  ranks  of  the  Ministry 
itself — candid  Suffragists  already  say  that  that,  and  a 
good  deal  more,  is  what  they  are  aiming  at.  That 
might  be  resisted  for  a  while,  but  militant  methods  at 
work  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  inspired  by  the 
humourless  ingenuity  of  the  militant  methods  outside 
with  which  we  are  already  familiar,  would  soon  make 
that  claim  good.  And  each  irresistible  step  taken  would 
make  the  next  easier  and  more  irresistible,  so  that 
women  would  then  be  admitted  to  the  higher  offices  of 
State,  and  would  permeate  the  whole  official  body  of 
the  State,  which  threatens  according  to  present  ten- 
dencies, to  be  increased  enormously.  The  claim  to 
positions  in  the  magistracy,  Recorderships,  and  finally 
the  Bench  of  the  High  Court,  would  be  then  made 
good  ;  for  there  would  be  no  answer  to  the  same 
contention  that  all  artificial  distinctions  of  sex  in  the 
State  must  be  swept  aside.  Moreover,  it  would  no 
longer  be  merely  a  power  of  argument,  of  persistence, 


THE  FIRST  STEP 


of  arrogance,  of  passive  resistance,  and  of  all  the 
resources  of  the  feminine  mind  that  would  be  em- 
ployed. Beyond  these  resources  women  would  possess 
a  concrete  political  power — every  male  parliamentary 
candidate  who  was  compelled  to  ask  their  suffrages 
would  be  at  their  mercy,  and  would  —  from  what  we 
know  of  the  weaker  kind  of  parliamentary  candidate — 
make  promises  right  and  left. 

Women  on  the  Bench. 

Let  me  pause  to  dispel  an  illusion  on  this  point  of 
women  attaining  the  higher  offices  of  State — the  illusion 
created  by  the  comic  perception.  If  the  fact  of  a 
woman  as  Prime  Minister,  or  as  Lord  Chief  Justice  is 
now  conveyed,  either  pictorially  or  literally,  you  laugh 
at  it  as  an  absurdity.  The  masculine  mind,  even 
though  it  be  of  that  type  which  says,  "  Let  them  have 
it ! — what  does  it  matter  ? "  nevertheless  recoils  in 
derisive  laughter  before  the  notion  of  a  woman  presiding 
at  an  Old  Bailey  trial,  or  introducing  a  Budget,  or 
threatening  a  foreign  Power  with  the  displeasure  of 
Great  Britain.  The  laughter,  of  course,  is  only 
the  instinctive  expression  of  the  difference  that  is 
instinctively  realised  between  men  and  women.  But 
that  difference  must  be  realised,  not  by  laughter  and 
the  comic  spirit,  but  by  reason  and  intelligence;  and 
realised  at  the  beginning  and  not  half-way  through  the 
journey.  If  laughter  is  to  be  dethroned  by  logic  to 
begin  with,  it  will  find  itself  laughed  at  by  logic 
later  on. 

And  if  we  now  laugh  at  the  notion  of  a  woman  as  a 
King's  Bench  judge,  it  is  only  because  the  logical  con- 
clusion of  a  step  logically  taken  in  the  first  place, 
startles  us  by  its  unfamiliarity  now.  But  it  would  not 
startle  us  ten  years  after  Woman  Suffrage  had  been 
granted.  We  should  have  become  so  familiarised  with 
each  successive  invasion  by  woman  of  man's  sphere, 
that  we  should  not  even  have  the  assistance  of  a  sense 
of  novelty  and  incongruity  to  help  us  to  frame  an 
answer  to  this  claim  :  "  There  is  not  a  single  woman 


32  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


judge  upon  the  High  Court  Bench !  Day  after  day 
criminal  cases  arise  in  which  our  sex — the  majority  of 
the  voters  of  these  islands,  pray  remember — is  vitally 
interested.  Laws  are  no  longer  man-made,  but  those 
who  administer  the  laws  are  still  men.  How  long  shall 
we  be  asked  to  endure  this  affront  to  our  sex,  how 
much  longer  shall  we  be  expected  to  tolerate  this 
withered  branch  still  lingering  on  the  dead  tree  of  a 
blasted  sex  supremacy  ?  " 

The  Reaction. 

And  so,  rolling  on  like  a  snowball,  the  movement 
would  irresistibly  progress  until  all  departments  of  State 
administration  were  permeated  by  women.  And  then 
would  come  an  interesting  development.  For  it  would 
gradually  dawn  upon  men  that  women  were  filling 
positions  of  honour  and  profit  in  the  State  but  were  not 
filling  the  positions  of  arduous  labour  for  which 
physical  qualifications  are  needed.  It  would  occur  to 
men  that  though  women  were  Home  Office  inspectors 
of  confectionery  shops  or  State  inspectors  of  nurseries, 
it  was  from  the  ranks  of  men  that  State  inspectors  of 
coal  mines  were  drawn.  It  might  occur  to  men  that 
though  women  collected  rates  and  taxes  in  comfortable 
offices,  they  did  not  collect  customs  at  ports.  It  might 
occur  to  men  that  though  women  were  medical  officers 
of  the  State  nursing  homes,  men  were  the  medical 
officers  of  the  Board  of  Trade  who  went  out  on  un- 
pleasant little  tugs  to  board  liners.  It  might  occur 
to  men,  indeed,  that  women  were  securing  "  the  soft 
jobs,"  but  leaving  men  to  do  that  work  which  was  still 
"  a  man's  work."  And  as  in  little  things,  so  in  big.  It 
might  occur  to  men  that  if  no  woman  had  yet  been 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  that  was  merely  an 
accidental  circumstance  that  might  at  any  moment  be 
remedied  by  a  little  extra  political  pressure  ;  but  that  it 
was  nevertheless  absurd  that  a  woman  should  be  a  First 
Lord  of  the  Admiralty  when  no  woman  was  an  admiral; 
and  that  it  was  ridiculous  for  a  woman  to  be  Secretary 
at  War  when  no  woman  was  enrolled  as  a  soldier  •  or 


THE  FIRST  STEP 


33 


that  a  woman  should  be  at  the  head,  as  Home  Secretary, 
of  the  Metropolitan  police,  when  no  woman  had  en- 
rolled herself  as  a  policeman  to  protect  life  and  pro- 
perty in  the  city  and  suburbs  in  the  small  hours  of  the 
morning. 

And  when  these  things  had  dawned  upon  men,  they 
would  realise  that  the  first  step  taken  in  the  second 
decade  of  the  twentieth  century  was  the  step  from 
which  had  proceeded  the  wholly  impossible  situation 
that  women  were  given  a  position  of  equality  in  the 
control  of  the  State  without  being  called  upon  to 
perform  these  functions  which  are  the  final  and  funda- 
mental guarantee  of  the  very  existence  of  the  State, 
either  externally  in  relation  to  other  States,  or  in- 
ternally in  relation  to  the  maintenance  of  law  and 
order  within  itself.  It  would,  in  short,  dawn  upon  men 
that  women  were,  in  relation  to  the  State,  a  privileged 
class,  having  complete  power  without  final  responsi- 
bility. 

What  would  happen  then — and  that  point  would  be 
inevitably  reached  —  I  do  not  know.  Possibly,  the 
male  portion  of  the  race  would  have  lost  so  much  ot 
its  virility  under  feminine  influence  and  predominance 
that  they  would  only  have  enough  masculine  courage 
left  to  propose  that  it  was  time  women  should  take 
their  full  share  of  the  work  of  the  State  and  the  nation. 
But  if  that  degree  of  emasculation  had  not  been  reached, 
then  the  vigour  of  men,  confronted  by  this  culminating 
conclusion  of  a  logical  proceeding,  would  more  pro- 
bably assert  itself  again.  Brought  face  to  face  with 
the  position  that  women  must  either  be  granted  a 
privileged  position  of  power  in  the  State,  or  be  soldiers, 
sailors,  and  policemen  as  well  as  politicians,  judges, 
and  comfortable  bureaucrats  —  colliers,  navvies  and 
dustmen  as  well  as  clerks,  inspectors  and  doctors, — the 
probability  is  that  men  would  rise  up  to  end  the  im- 
possible situation  we  had  prepared  for  them,  and  would 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  Nature  was  wiser  than  the 
theorists  had  been,  survey  a  hard-bitten  and  unlovely 
womanhood  with  pity,  and  establish  once  again  the 


34  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


political  dominion  of  man,  whilst  restoring  woman  to 
her  old  position  of  social  dignity  and  domestic  grace. 

And  now  we  can  return  to  the  point  wherein  lies 
the  main  difference  between  men  and  women,  in  order 
to  shew  that  the  difference  between  them,  despite  all 
their  likenesses,  just  makes  the  difference  between 
Woman  Suffrage  being  wise  and  inevitable  and  being 
foolish  and  chimerical. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
"  As  It  Was  In  The  Beginning." 

THE    LEGENDARY    WOMAN — NATURE'S    FIAT— MAN 
THE  WORKER. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


"  As  It  Was  In  The  Beginning." 

A  CHAPTER  dealing  with  some  of  the  essential  differ- 
ences between  men  and  women  is  a  convenient  place 
for  uttering  a  certain  warning  and  a  certain  protest. 
The  protest  is  against  the  indignation  which  plain 
language  concerning  the  sexes  incites  among  Suftra- 
gists.  The  warning  is  that  if  it  be  necessary  to  use 
plain  language  about  the  essential  facts  of  sex,  plain 
language  must  be  used.  It  is  indeed  an  odd  thing  that 
although  women  are  now  the  most  audacious  breakers 
of  convention,  and  although  women  novelists  are  the 
greatest  offenders  in  the  production  of  erotic  fiction,  a 
man  is  rebuked  for  calling  attention  to  some  of  the 
plain  facts  about  the  phenomenon  of  sex  even  in  a 
serious  discussion  by  which  they  themselves  have 
raised  the  whole  question  of  the  difference  between  one 
sex  and  another.  I  have  known  cases  in  which  men, 
dealing  straightforwardly  and  reverently  with  some 
of  the  fundamental  truths  about  the  sexes,  have  been 
rebuked  by  Suffragists  for  being  "  coarse-minded."  It 
may  or  may  not  have  been  that  the  modesty  of  the 
protestants  was  shocked.  But  what  chiefly  concerned 
them  was  that  it  is  an  extremely  easy  thing  to  cover 
a  man  with  ignominy  by  pretending  or  asserting  that  he 
has  shocked  sensitive  female  ears,  and  so  that  prudery 
was,  in  some  cases  coming  within  my  own  knowledge, 
merely  a  characteristically  mean  way  of  taking  ad- 
vantage of  one  aspect  of  that  difference  in  sex  which 
they  deny. 

But  that  epithet  need  not  deter  anyone  from  raising 
proper  and  relevant  points  connected  with  sex,  for 
truly  modest  people  are  not  affected  by  a  straight- 
forward presentation  of  relevant  truths.    Doctors  are 

37 


38 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


not  coarse-minded  men — rather  the  opposite — and 
the  question  of  decency  no  more  arises  in  relation  to 
a  serious  discussion  of  this  matter  than  it  does  in  a 
surgical  operation  or  in  a  lecture  to  students  in  the 
theatre  of  a  medical  school.  The  man  who  faints  at 
the  sight  of  blood  should  not  go  in  for  boxing.  And 
the  woman  who  shrinks  when  confronted  with  some 
of  the  vital  truths  about  sex  should  not  raise  a 
question  which  is  a  sex  question  and  no  other. 

The  Legendary  Woman. 

Now,  it  is  generally  implied  by  Suffragists  that  the 
relative  positions  of  man  and  woman  as  they  now  are, 
are  not  what  they  naturally  should  be  and  once  were ; 
but  that  at  some  point  in  the  far  backward  abysm  of 
time  woman  was  strong,  self-reliant,  "  man's  equal,  and 
not  his  slave,"  and  as  good  a  man,  in  fact,  as  her  male 
partner.  But  in  the  course  of  the  ages,  by  brute  force 
and  physical  superiority — so  the  argument  runs — man 
acquired  a  tyrannical  empire  over  woman,  subjugated 
her,  made  her  his  domestic  helot,  and  began  the  process 
of  subjection  which  ended  in  her  having  no  Vote. 
And  woman  is  now  going  to  throw  off  these  chains, 
and  resume  her  rightful — and  as  I  understand  the 
argument,  her  original — relation  to  man,  and  become 
a  free,  enlightened,  and  self-sufficient  and  independent 
being.  Now  the  point  at  which  this  subjugation  of 
woman  took  place  is  wropt  in  the  mists  and  mystery 
of  unrecorded  time.  As  is  the  case  with  the  Social 
Contract  of  discredited  political  philosophers,  no  man 
can  put  his  finger  on  the  time  when  woman  was  the 
equal  of  her  male  mate.  And  the  difficulty  in  both 
cases  is  the  same  :  There  never  was  a  time  when  man, 
in  "  a  state  of  nature,"  was  a  simple  charming  savage, 
living  a  life  of  idyllic  felicity,  subject  to  no  laws  but 
those  of  Nature,  and  unhampered  by  the  superior 
force  of  any  form  of  government.  And  there  never 
was  a  time  when  woman  held  an  equal  position  as 
man's  mate,  doing  exactly  what  he  did,  and  being 
"  subject  to  no  limitations  of  sex,"  and  realising  the 


AS  IT  WAS  IN  THE  BEGINNING  '  39 


ideal  condition  which  Suffragists  wish  to  see  her  now 
resume.  For  though  she  was  once  a  beast  of  burden 
and  toil,  conforming  herself  like  man  to  primitive 
conditions,  it  is  not  to  that  state  of  nature  that 
Suffragists  wish  her  to  return  but  to  that  wholly 
mythical  state  when  she  was  a  free,  glorious  being, 
in  every  respect  the  equal  of  man. 

But  man's  sphere  and  woman's  sphere  have  been 
substantially  the  same  throughout  the  ages,  and  the 
reason  for  that  is  that  the  two  spheres  have  not  been 
delimited  by  the  tyranny  of  man  but  by  the  tyranny 
of  Nature.  Even  the  contention  that  woman  has  been 
subjugated  by  man's  physical  superiority  js  an  ad- 
mission of  the  nonsense  of  the  natural-equality  theory, 
for  if  man  and  woman  started  as  physical  equals  in 
the  human  race  (and  in  the  dawn  of  things  physical 
strength  and  not  moral  grandeur  would  be  the  sole 
test  of  superiority)  why  did  woman  not  hold  her  place? 
Why,  indeed,  did  she  not  subjugate  man  ? 

Nature's  Fiat. 

The  simple  truth  is  that  woman  started  the  race 
(if  the  idea  of  rivalry  is  to  be  allowed  at  all)  horribly 
handicapped  by  the  fact  that  Nature  assigned  to  her 
the  function  of  giving  birth  to  children  ;  and  Nature, 
moreover,  inconsiderately  ordained  that  the  human 
gestatory  period  should  be  nine  months — probably  a 
very  senseless  arrangement,  but  there  it  is — and  so 
the  race  could  only  be  perpetuated  by  woman  being 
hors  de  combat,  so  far  as  any  violent  physical  struggle 
for  life  was  concerned,  for  a  considerable  portion  of 
each  year  during  each  effective  use  of  her  fecund 
period — that  is  to  say,  during  the  most  active  years 
of  her  life.  Moreover,  Nature  ordained  that  even 
when  woman  was  not  engaged  in  the  work  of  per- 
petuating the  race,  she  should  be  subject  to  physical 
phenomena  during  those  same  years,  which  amounted 
to  physical  disabilities  when  considered  in  relation  to 
man's  freedom  from  anything  of  the  kind,  and  so 
impaired  her  physical  efficiency  compared  with  his. 


40 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


These  inalienable  features  of  her  sex  may  not  be 
desirable,  but  as  they  are  there,  and  are  naturally 
incidental  to  the  perpetuation  of  the  race,  and  exist 
even  apart  from  it,  they  must  be  accepted. 

Man  the  Worker. 

But  man  was  placed  under  no  such  disabilities. 
The  act  which  put  woman  out  of  the  combat  for  at 
least  three  months  of  tha  year  did  not  lay  him  under 
any  such  prolonged  physical  disability.     If  it  had 
done,  how  would  men  and  women  have  lived,  seeing 
that  there  is  no  human  neuter  to  look  after  them  ? 
And  so  Nature  herself,  and  not  man,  doomed  woman 
to  an  unequal  physical  relation  with  man,  and  it  is  an 
inequality  from  which  she  cannot  escape,  except  to 
some  extent  by  the  evasion  of  Nature's  intention 
concerning  her,  in  avoiding   maternity  altogether — 
which  is  the  direction  in  which  the  extremer  doctrines 
of  modern  feminism  are  tending.    But  even  by  that 
deliberate  evasion  of  her  duty — an  evasion  which 
contracts  woman,  as  will  shortly  be  shown,  out  of 
the   only  sphere   in   which   she   is   biologically  or 
socially  essential — she   cannot  wholly  escape  from 
the  ban  of  physical  inferiority.    For  woman's  physical 
structure,  confirmed  by  the  ages  during  which  she 
has  discharged  her  maternal  duties  as  a  matter  of 
course,  has  become  unsuited  to  such  violent  physical 
exertion  as  man  can  sustain,  and  Nature  has  decreed 
that  even  if  she  avoids  maternity,  her  physical  con- 
stitution is  subject  to  ravages  and  changes  which  have 
no  physiological  counterpart  in  man. 

And  so,  although  we  know  really  nothing  histori- 
cally of  our  very  earliest  ancestors,  we  know  that  even 
their  relations  to  each  other,  as  primitive  man  and 
woman,  must  have  been  determined  for  them.  The 
first  woman  on  earth  was  no  doubt  a  stalwart,  sinewy, 
hairy  and  uncouth  creature — very  different  from  the 
refined  product  of  our  civilisation  and  of  the  long 
process  of  female  differentiation  in  social  function 
which  began  even  then.    But  we  can  see  how  the 


"AS  IT  WAS  IN  THE  BEGINNING"  41 


differentiation  must  have  begun.  When  the  first 
man  discovered  that  his  mate  was  with  child,  he  saw 
that  he  was  born  into  a  scheme  of  things  in  which 
he  would  have  to  do  the  hardest  work,  and  that  his 
mate  would  have  to  remain  behind  in  whatever  was 
their  dwelling  whilst  he  adventured  forth  in  quest  of 
their  common  elemental  wants ;  or,  if  they  were 
nomads,  that  he  would  have  to  bear  the  heavier 
burdens  and  shield  his  mate  from  what  physical 
fatigue  he  could  spare  her.  One  cannot  suppose 
that  the  primitive  animalistic  man  carried  his  tender- 
ness and  care  to  the  same  pitch  as  that  which  he 
exhibits  to  day,  but  he  must  have  learnt  the  elements 
of  a  crude  chivalry  even  then,  or  the  race  would 
hardly  have  got  a  start  at  all.  And  the  arrival  of 
the  offspring,  and  then  its  successors,  would  naturally 
confirm  her  in  her  domestic  status.  The  offspring  had 
to  be  nursed  and  nurtured  during  its  helpless  years 
(and  the  human  child  takes  longer  than  any  other 
young  animal  to  arrive  at  maturity),  the  slain  birds 
and  animals  brought  home  by  man  had  to  be  pre- 
pared for  food  and  their  skins  prepared  for  clothing  ; 
and  so  without  any  inherited  experience  or  traditional 
knowledge,  the  first  man  and  the  first  woman  found 
their  spheres  delimited  for  them — mapped  out  by 
Nature  herself  In  short,  the  beginning  of  the  differ- 
ence between  the  social  functions  of  man  and  woman 
was  in  the  beginning. 

All  this,  of  course  (and  a  little  more  to  follow),  is 
very  elementary  truth,  but  the  point  is  that  it  is  the 
truth.  And  though  it  is  elementary  it  is  all-impor- 
tant. Or  rather,  because  it  is  elementary  it  is  all- 
important.  The  elemental  facts  are  what  should  guide 
us  in  dealing  with  so  general  and  broad  and  deep  a 
question  as  that  of  sex,  the  prime  and  elemental  facts 
of  which  will  always  remain  defiantly  true.  And  so  it 
is  more  important  that  we  should  consider  the  inalien- 
able, inherent,  and  elemental  facts  of  sex  than  such  ab- 
normal or  accidental  modifications  of  them  as  may  be 
furnished  here  and  there  by  ancient  or  modern  examples. 


42  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Having  now  seen  how  and  when  woman's  social 
relation  to  man  was  determined  ;  how  and  when  the 
natural  spheres  of  man  and  woman  were  delimited  ; 
and  why  it  comes  about  that  woman  is  man's  physical 
inferior,  and  at  a  disadvantage  with  man  in  con- 
fronting the  external  world,  we  may  now  begin  to 
consider  whither  this  physical  inferiority  of  woman 
has  led,  and  how  far  it  governs  her  aptitude,  not 
only  as  a  human  being  in  her  personal  and  domestic 
relations  with  man,  but  in  her  relation  to  all  those 
activities  which  build  up  and  maintain  the  State. 


CHAPTER  V. 


Superfluous  Woman. 

THE  STATE  INDEPENDENT  OF  WOMAN — INDUSTRIAL 
ISM  WITHOUT  WOMEN — WOMAN  AND  THE  ARTS- 
WOMAN  IN  LITERATURE  AND  SCIENCE — TWO  HYPO 
THESES. 


CHAPTER  V. 


Superfluous  Woman. 

In  the  previous  chapter  it  was  parenthetically  stated 
that  the  function  of  bringing  children  into  the  world 
was  the  only  function  which  made  woman  essential 
to  the  State. 

That  may  seem  a  very  surprising  statement  to  those 
who  have  not  thought  the  matter  out  beyond  the 
"logical"  or  "democratic"  basis  of  women's  claim  to 
vote.  But  it  is  strictly  true.  A  modified  form  of  that 
statement  would  be,  however,  of  wider  truth,  and  if  we 
say  that  woman  is  not  essential  to  the  State  except  in 
so  far  as  she  is  essential  to  the  Home  we  have  said  all 
that  can  be  said  for  woman's  essentially  necessary 
place  in  the  social  organism. 

If  we  first  consider  the  State  as  a  centralised  govern- 
ment, and  examine  woman's  relation  to  it  ;  and  if  we 
then  consider  the  State  as  limited  not  only  to  a  cen- 
tralised executive  government,  but  including  also  those 
material  and  moral  activities  which  make  up  a  modern 
community  of  human  beings,  not  touching  the  family 
life,  we  shall  see  that  it  is  equally  true,  whether  the  first 
limited  or  the  second  wider  view  is  taken  of  what 
constitutes  the  State,  that  woman  is  wholly  superfluous 
to  the  State  except  as  a  bearer  of  children  and  a 
nursing  mother. 

The  State  Independent 
of  Woman. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  State,  considered  merely  as  a 
government,  has  no  need  of  woman  at  all,  and  that  is 
the  State  into  which  she  wishes  to  penetrate  by  the 
legal  key  of  a  vote  that  will  afterwards  unlock  all  other 
doors.    The  State  does  not  need  woman,  first,  as 

45 


46  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


soldiers  or  as  sailors,  that  is  for  its  defence.  I  need  not 
linger  on  that  proposition,  as  it  expresses  a  self-evident 
fact.     Nor  does  the  State,  considered  as  government, 
need  women  as  statesmen,  ambassadors,  civil  servants 
or  police.    That  statement  also  is  self-evident,  for  it  is 
the  statement  of   existing   fact.     And  the  whole 
machinery  of  government  could  still  go  on  working  if 
the  direst  calamity  that  ever  could  afflict  man  fell  upon 
him,  and  woman  ceased  to  be.   To  give  no  opportunity 
for  a  debating  point — or  rather  to  close  it  right  away 
—  I  admit  it  is  clear  to  the  lowest  intelligence  that  the 
State,  in  such  a  case,  would  not  need  to  provide  for  any 
remote  contingencies,  but  that  is  because  the  function 
reserved  to  woman,  making  her  by  that  alone  indis- 
pensable to  the  State,  is  that  she  should  bear  children 
(although,  as  we  shall  later  see,  maternity  serves  the 
family  rather  than  the  State  just  as  paternity  does). 
But  for  the  time  being,  and  for  the  purposes  of  its 
current  existence,  woman  could   be  dispensed  with 
entirely,  so  far  as  the  State  is  concerned.    That  pro- 
position also  requires  no  proof.    For  as  things  actually 
are — save  for  a  few  women  officials  in  the  central 
administration — the  whole  machinery  of  the  State  into 
which  some  women  wish  that  all  women  may  enter, at  the 
present  moment  goes  on  absolutely  unimpeded  and  un- 
assisted by  women.    There  are  also  women  outside  the 
central  administration — in  the  Post  Office,  for  instance, 
and  as  workhouse  and  infirmary  officials,  and  as  school 
teachers.    But  they  are  there  not  because  they  are 
sexually  necessary,  and  they  could  be  replaced  by  men 
to-morrow  (with  those  few  exceptions  where  women  are 
preferable  because  of  the  domestic  nature  of  their  oc- 
cupations) without  materially  affecting  the  efficient 
working  of  the  machinery  of  government — central, 
subordinate,  and  local.    So  that  almost  at  the  outset  of 
considering  this  whole  question,  we  are  confronted  by 
the  fact  that  the  sphere  into  which  woman  wishes  to 
enter  is  a  sphere  that  has  no  need  of  her  whatever. 


SUPERFLUOUS  WOMAN  47 


Industrialism 
without  Woman. 

And  now  we  have  to  consider  the  relation  of  women 
to  the  State  in  its  less  restricted  aspect — viz.,  the 
general  community,  into  which  women  may  pene- 
trate, if  they  wish,  without  the  vote  at  all.  We  are 
now  considering  the  State  as  the  general  community, 
outside  the  Home  altogether,  and  therefore  as  regards 
its  non-domestic  activities  ;  and  we  are  supposing  that 
women  are  not  immured  in  their  homes,  but  are  left 
to  their  own  devices,  but  that  they  have  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  any  trade,  profession,  or  occupation 
outside  the  four  walls  of  their  homes. 

Well,  the  transport  services  of  the  country,  to  begin 
with,  would  still  go  on  exactly  in  the  same  way,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  the  transport  services  of  the 
country  by  rail,  tram,  'bus,  or  boat,  as  things  are, 
receive  no  assistance  whatever  from  women — except  a 
few  wives  of  a  few  bargees,  who  are  not  indispensable  to 
working  the  canal-boats,  however,  though  they  oc- 
casionally take  a  little  exercise  along  with  the  horse  on 
the  towing-path,  but  who  use  the  canal-boats  as 
dwellings,  so  that  they  are  still  at  home.  And  the 
iron  and  coal  industries  of  the  country  would  continue 
in  the  same  unhindered  way,  for  just  the  same  reason. 
For  though  there  are,  in  the  case  of  the  coal  industry,  a 
few  pit-brow  women  (concerning  whom  Suffragists  are 
not  quite  sure  whether  man  ought  to  be  ashamed  of 
himself  for  allowing  them  to  work  at  such  an  unwomanly 
occupation,  or  ashamed  of  himself  for  contemplating 
such  an  interference  with  woman's  freedom  as  to  stop 
them  working  at  it) — though  a  few  pit-brow  women 
are  to  be  found  in  Lancashire,  no  one  will  contend  that 
if  they  all  went  to  the  Isle  of  Man  to-morrow  their 
places  could  not  be  filled,  I  will  merely  say  adequately, 
by  masculine  muscles.  Nor  would  the  building  trades, 
the  shipping,  the  docks,  and  the  engineering  trades  be 
affected  in  the  slightest  degree  if  women  remained  at 
home  and  only  emerged  to  do  their  shopping,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  as  far  as  those  trades  are  concerned 


48  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


the  women  already  stay  at  home.  And  all  those  trades 
are  the  most  wealth  producing  and  the  most  essential 
industries  of  the  country. 

In  the  next  group  of  trades,  such  as  the  textile, 
dressmaking,  and  pottery  trades,  there  would  be  for  the 
time  being  an  absolute  stoppage  if  women  remained  at 
home  ;  and  the  trades  would  be  entirely  dislocated. 
But  the  stoppage  would  only  be  temporary,  and  the 
d'slocation  would  last  only  as  long  as  was  necessary  to 
adjust  the  trades  to  the  fresh  economic  conditions 
involved  by  the  increase  of  the  cost  of  production  due 
to  the  higher  rates  of  payment  to  men,  but  if  the  purely 
economic  condition  is  ignored,  these  trades  also  would 
be  entirely  unaffected  by  woman's  withdrawal  from 
them.  If  women  clerks  were  withdrawn  from  the  Post 
Office  counters,  the  male  substitutes  that  would  be 
found  for  them  would,  in  the  opinion  of  some  people — 
not  necessarily  a  right  opinion,  but  it  is  not  very  far 
wrong — improve  the  service.  In  the  whole  banking 
and  brokering  world  the  withdrawal  of  women  would 
disturb  merely  the  clerical  machinery,  and  restore  to 
something  like  "economic  independence"  the  poor  male 
clerk  who  now  goes  to  the  wall  mainly  because  girls 
who  live  at  home,  and  hope  some  day  to  marry,  are 
willing  and  able  to  do  his  work,  more  or  less  efficiently, 
for  a  less  reward.  Take  the  whole  body  of  industry 
from  end  to  end,  and  there  is  not  one  of  the  chief 
wealth  producing  industries  that  depends  upon  women 
for  its  existence,  if  we  delete  'he  economic  advantages 
of  female  labour  to  the  employers  m  certain  industries. 
The  fact  that  in  these  industries  women  are  employed 
— always  in  a  subordinate  capacity  —  must  not  confuse 
the  fact  that  they  are  there  for  capitalistic  economic 
advantage,  and  not  because  as  a  sex  they  are  necessary 
for  the  work  to  be  done ;  and  if  their  places  were 
supplied  by  men  and  boys  to-morrow  the  industries 
could  go  on  just  the  same  as  before — temporary 
economic  disturbance  apart. 


SUPERFLUOUS  WOMAN  49 


Woman  and  the  Arts. 

Leaving  trades,  and  coming  to  professions,  the  same 
rule  holds.  No  woman  is  needed  in  the  legal  pro- 
fession whatever — a  fact  which  is  proved  by  its  own 
self.  No  woman  is  needed  in  the  medical  profession — 
a  fact  which  is  not  affected  by  the  fact  that  the 
medical  profession  includes  women.  If  every  woman 
doctor  retired  to-morrow,  the  practice  of  surgery  and 
medicine  would  continue  unimpaired — and  unassisted 
by  any  contribution  to  medical  or  surgical  science  that 
women  have  ever  made.  To  say  that  no  woman  is 
needed  in  art  and  literature  would  be  too  sweeping 
a  statement,  so  crudely  put,  but  we  can  nevertheless 
bring  it  without  any  difficulty  within  the  scope  of 
the  hypothesis  that  no  woman  need  leave  her  home, 
and  yet  the  State,  in  all  its  activities,  could  go  on. 
But  when  I  say  that  no  woman  is  needed  in  art  and 
literature,  I  have  my  mind  on  this  fact :  That  the 
whole  body  of  literature  and  art  left  after  subtract- 
ing from  it  the  best  that  women  have  contributed 
to  either  branch,  would  be  just  what  would  be  left  if 
the  same  number  of  second-rate  male  artists  and 
literary  men  had  never  been  born.  There  would  be 
a  gap,  but  the  body  of  art  and  literature  left  after 
woman's  contributions  had  been  taken  away  would  be 
quite  enough  to  go  on  with — no  gap  would  be  made 
by  the  withdrawal  of  any  work  of  the  first  rank. 
But  somebody  will  say  that,  in  talking  about  art,  I 
have  forgotten  the  dramatic  art  and  actresses.  Well, 
even  the  word  "  actresses  "  has  no  terrors  for  me,  for 
the  English  stage  flourished  in  Shakespeare's  day 
when  women  were  forbidden  by  law  to  take  part  in 
stage  plays,  and  boys  took  the  female  parts.  But  I 
concede  the  wholly  immaterial  point  so  far  as  the 
dramatic  art  is  concerned,  that  though  no  woman  has 
yet  written  a  play  that  the  world  will  ever  want  to 
resurrect,  it  is  desirable  that  actresses  should  still 
charm  us  on  the  stage  and  bore  us  (as  I  am  afraid  we 
must  say  they  sometimes  do)  in  the  illustrated  papers. 


so  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


But  no  single  work  of  art  of  supreme  genius  has 
been  produced  by  a  woman  since  the  world  began, 
though  the  whole  realm  of  art  has  been  open  to  her 
since  Sappho  sang,  and  though  neither  her  domestic 
subjection  nor  her  political  inequality  can  have  re- 
strained her  if  she  had  the  impulse  within  her.  But 
perhaps  I  had  better  here  take  Mill's  own  words  on 
the  point.  They  were  included  in  that  chapter  of  his 
book,  "  The  Subjection  of  Women,"  in  which  he  was, 
broadly  speaking,  trying  to  prove  the  contrary  of 
what  is  being  maintained  in  this  chapter.  For  he 
was  endeavouring  to  prove  the  fitness  of  women  to 
share  in  the  work  of  the  State,  and  not  what  I  am 
endeavouring  to  show,  that  so  alien  is  the  State  to 
woman  that,  apart  from  her  maternal  functions  in  the 
home,  the  State  does  not  need  her  at  all.  And  Mill 
admitted  :  "  But  they  have  not  yet  produced  any  of 
those  great  and  luminous  new  ideas  which  form  an 
era  of  thought,  nor  those  fundamentally  new  con- 
ceptions in  art  which  open  a  vista  of  possible  effects 
not  before  thought  of,  and  found  a  new  school."  And 
though  woman's  activities  in  literature  and  art  since 
Mill's  day  have  enormously  and  amazingly  increased, 
that  admission  still  holds  good  :  even  the  highest  and 
best  of  them  only  attains  a  place  in  the  second  rank. 

Woman  in  Literature 
and  Science 

In  literature  she  could  be  deleted  with  more  loss 
and  regrets  than  in  art,  and  in  contemporary  fiction 
especially  she  would  be  missed  ;  but  neither  art  nor 
literature  would  be  sensibly  affected.  We  should  be 
sorry  to  have  to  miss  "Jane  Eyre,"  or  "Aurora  Leigh," 
or  "  Adam  Bede,"  or  "  Robert  Elsmere,"  but  though  a 
few  women  writers  have  attained  a  very  high  rank, 
even  the  best  of  them  lack  that  quality  which 
trayisfigures.  And  if  we  have  to  compare  what  would 
be  missed  by  woman's  withdrawal  from  art  and  litera- 
ture, as  compared  with  man's,  we  may  say  that,  in 
the  case  of  woman's  accomplishment,  it  would  be  like 


SUPERFLUOUS  WOMAN  51 


missing  five  hundred  pounds  out  of  a  very  big  fortune 
indeed,  but  that  in  the  case  of  what  man  has  accom- 
plished it  would  be  like  missing  an  arm  or  a  leg,  or 
even  a  head,  from  a  body.  And  art  and  letters  do 
not  depend  on  voting  power  or  even  economic  in- 
dependence— they  are  the  media  of  self  expression. 
Amongst  the  arts,  music  is  that  which  owes  least  to 
culture  and  most  to  the  possession  of  original  powers. 
And  as  far  as  creative  music  is  concerned,  woman 
would  not  be  missed  in  the  slightest  degree,  for  she 
has  created  no  music  whatever  that  comes  anywhere 
near  the  first  rank.  In  executive  music  she  is  out- 
distanced by  the  great  male  performers ;  and  we  have 
to  come  to  vocal  music  and  to  the  contralto  and 
soprano  voices  of  women  before  we  stumble  on  a 
single  instance  in  which  woman  is  indispensable  in 
the  State  (considered,  moreover,  in  its  widest  possible 
aspect  as  the  general  community) — and  even  so  we 
have  the  choir  of  St  Peter's  and  our  own  memories 
of  the  angelic  voices  of  boys  in  our  own  cathedrals 
to  show  us  that  still  woman  would  not  be  indispensable 
even  in  that  class  of  work  and  achievement  which  it 
becomes  a  mere  fanciful  exercise  to  exclude  her  from. 

To  science — mechanical,  electrical  and  physical — 
woman  has  contributed  nothing  of  essential  import- 
ance. I  dodge  two  stock  brick-bats  thrown  at  me — 
one,  Madame  Curie,  who  shared  with  her  husband  a 
glorious  discovery,  and  the  other,  Mrs  Ayrton,  who 
has  made  some  researches  into  the  behaviour  of  the 
electric  arc  which  are  no  doubt  important,  though  I 
am  scientifically  incompetent  to  say  how  important. 
But  for  these  two  solitary  examples  of  any  original 
achievement  performed  by  woman  in  the  realm  of 
science  to  be  made  to  disprove  my  point  so  far 
even  as  science  is  concerned,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
prove  that  the  collaborated  discovery  made  by  Madame 
Curie,  and  the  original  researches  of  Mrs  Ayrton, 
would  not  have  been  made  by  a  man,  if  not  there- 
about, then  very  shortly  after. 

And  even    if  we   include  domestic  occupations 


52 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


outside  the  domestic  sphere — cooking  and  sewing  for 
instance — the  best  journeymen  in  these  occupations 
are  still  men  and  not  women,  and  as  for  what  it  is 
a  pleasure  to  call  la  haute  ecole  de  la  cuisine,  the 
name  of  M.  Soyer  just  now  is  quite  enough.  But 
the  significance  of  M.  Soyer  deserves,  I  think,  a 
chapter  all  to  himself  In  short  there  is  not  a  single 
relation  that  woman  holds  either  to  the  State  or  the 
general  community,  outside  her  maternal  functions, 
in  which  she  is  indispensable. 

Two  Hypotheses. 

That  surely  is  not  merely  a  very  significant  but  a 
stupendous  fact.  For  it  means,  if  we  care  to  conceive 
the  horrid  possibility,  that  if  women  were  limited 
merely  to  the  purposes  of  reproduction,  the  State  and 
the  nation  could  still  continue.  Nay,  deprive  her  even 
of  her  duties  as  a  mother,  once  a  mother,  take  her 
own  offspring  off  her  hands,  and  delete  all  that  is 
meant  by  a  mother's  care,  and  still  she  is  not  indis- 
pensable to  the  material  needs  of  the  State.  Deprive 
her,  in  fact,  of  the  priceless  part  of  her — her  place  in 
the  Home  itself — deprive  her  of  all  relation  with  the 
outside  world  and  the  world  would  still  go  on.  It 
would  not  be  the  same  world  if  the  priceless  part  of 
woman  were  suppressed.  For  it  is  impossible  to  estim- 
ate what  the  race  of  man  owes  to  the  work  of  woman 
in  the  home  as  wife  or  mother — even  as  that  marred 
soul,  the  housekeeper.  But  nobody  but  the  Suffragist 
wishes  to  cheapen  or  weaken  the  priceless  part  of  her. 
But  what  we  could  deprive  her  of  without  loss  to  the 
State  or  the  nation  in  any  single  material ,  particular 
is  all  that  work  which  lies  outside  the  home. 

And  if  we  want  really  to  find  out  what  woman's 
place  in  the  world  is,  let  us  imagine  two  things.  Let 
us  first  imagine  that  the  woman's  movement  had  taken 
her  away  from  the  home  altogether,  leaving  it  just  the 
sort  of  thing  it  would  be  like  if  every  man  were  a 
bachelor  looking  after  himself  The  picture  will  hardly 
bear  being  looked  upon.    And  now  let  us  suppose  that 


SUPERFLUOUS  WOMAN  53 


the  woman's  movement  had  been  not  what  we  know  it 
to  be  but  its  very  opposite — and  there  is  indeed  such  a 
movement,  only  the  other  and  more  strident  movement 
drowns  the  voices  of  those  who  are  going  more  quietly 
about  their  work.  But  let  us  suppose  that  the  woman's 
movement  as  we  know  it  had  taken  quite  another  turn, 
and  that  "  Back  to  the  Home ! "  was  the  modern 
woman's  cry,  and  that  women  threatened  that  they 
would  withdraw  themselves  entirely  from  the  outside 
world  if  man  did  not  do  something  or  other,  and  would 
henceforth  do  nothing  but  mind  their  own  homes  and 
babies.  If  that  threat  were  held  over  our  heads — if  we 
were  told  that  we  should  have  to  carry  on  the  State 
and  the  industry  and  all  the  professions  of  the  country 
without  woman's  assistance  —  with  what  composure 
should  we  receive  the  announcement,  nay,  with  what 
relief!  And  that  will  help  us  to  realise  how  far  woman 
is  unnecessary  in  the  State — not  only  the  governmental 
State  into  which  she  wishes  to  penetrate,  and  in  which 
she  is,  at  any  rate,  no  more  necessary  than  a  man  in  a 
nunnery,  but  that  wider  aspect  of  the  State  which 
means  the  whole  community  outside  the  home. 

Now  reverse  the  case.  Consider,  if  you  can,  an  out- 
side world  in  which  man  took  no  part,  and  in  which  its 
work  was  left  entirely  to  woman.  You  must  not  con- 
ceive a  race  of  women  so  changed  in  nature  as  to  be 
able  to  perform  man's  work  in  some  fashion  or  other. 
You  must  conceive  of  woman,  as  we  know  her  to-day, 
doing  man's  work  as  we  know  it  to-day  in  such  a  world 
as  that  in  which  we  live.  The  difficulty  of  that  con- 
ception, and  its  contrast  with  the  ease  with  which  we 
can  conceive  an  outside  world  in  which  woman  takes 
no  part  (a  conception  actually  realised  so  far  as  the 
State  into  which  she  wishes  to  enter  is  concerned,  and 
sufficiently  realised  in  regard  even  to  the  State  con- 
sidered as  a  community)  that  contrast,  I  say,  is  the 
result  of  our  enquiry  into  the  question  stated  in  the 
last  chapter,  viz. :  How  far  woman's  physical  inferiority 
to  man  has  carried  her.  It  has  carried  her  to  the  point 
that  she  has  no  necessary  relation  whatsoever  to  the 


54 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


work  of  the  State  and  the  community — except  in  so 
far  as  she  contributes  to  the  only  kind  of  state  and 
community  in  which  we  can  pleasantly  imagine  her  to 
be  pre-eminent,  by  her  duties  as  a  wife  and  mother  in 
that  little  kingdom  of  her  own,  the  family  home. 

The  rest  of  this  book  is  really  unnecessary.  That 
truth  is  the  unanswerable  answer  to  the  '■  demand  "  of 
woman  to  share  in  the  control  of  the  State.  She  is 
utterly  unnecessary  to  the  control  of  the  State. 

Nevertheless,  we  may  as  well  proceed. 


CHAPTER  VT. 


The  Two  Hemispheres  Of  Mankind. 

MAN  AS  THE  COOK— MAN  THE  ORIGINATOR — WOMAN'S 
DOMESTIC  FUNCTIONS  IN  THE  COMMUNITY— THE 
CHANNEL  THAT  DIVIDES  SEX— COMMON  GROUND. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


The  Two  Hemispheres  Of  Mankind 

In  the  last  chapter  a  passing  reference  was  made  to 
M  Soyer.  But  he  deserves,  for  what  he  has  done, 
rather  more  attention  than  a  passing  reference.  He 
has  not  only  invented  a  system  of  cookery  for  which 
women  have  been  expressing  their  gratitude  to  him, 
hailing  his  system  as  a  boon  and  a  blessing,  but  he 
has  established  some  claim  on  the  gratitude  of  his 
fellow  men.  Greater  men  have  done  greater  things 
than  M.  Soyer,  but  it  is  the  timely  significance  of  his 
accomplishment  that  makes  it  stand  out  in  relief.  As 
far  as  the  women  are  concerned  he  has  only  done  that 
which  man  has  done  from  the  very  beginning — show 
them  how  things  should  be  done.  But  for  men  M. 
Soyer  has  done  something  in^nitely  greater.  For  he 
has — or  he  ought  to  have  done — restored  men's  own 
faith  in  themselves  at  a  time  when  a  little  fillip  to  our 
esteem  was  very  badly  needed.  For  these  are  the 
days  when  women  allude  to  us  as  "  You  men  .  .  .  ' " 
derogatively,  derisively,  even  contemptuously.  It  has 
become  a  difficult  thing  in  these  days  to  raise  one's 
voice  in  praise  of  one's  own  sex.  I  have  found  that 
merely  to  contend  that  man  has,  after  all,  not  done  so 
badly  with  his  opportunities  has  been  to  lay  myself 
open  to  the  rebuke, "  Oh,  evidently  you  are  no 
democrat !  "  And  in  certain  feminine  circles  in  which 
I  have  found  myself  occasionally  marooned,  I  have 
gathered  that  it  is  no  longer  considered  good  form 
to  have  a  manly  opinion  of  the  masculine  sex,  but 
that  one  was  expected  to  assume,  between  shy  nibbles 
at  cake,  that  we  men  are  a  dreadfully  decadent  lot, 
just  as  to  be  a  "  good  Imperialist"  you  must  too  often 
E  57 


58  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


assent  to  the  impotence  and  decadence  and  backward- 
ness of  one's  own  motherland. 

But  unfortunately  I  have  not  the  subtle  tempera- 
ment that  is  necessary  for  that  polite  acquiescence 
in  a  fashionable  opinion  ;  and  I  decline  to  subscribe 
to  the  prevailing  heresy  that  my  sex  should  now  adopt 
an  apologetic  attitude  and  humble  itself  diffidently 
before  its  betters.  I  have  steadfastly  refused  to 
effeminise  myself  by  joining  in  the  tenor  chorus  that 
has  exalted  woman  by  dispraising  man.  I  have  had 
no  sympathy  with  the  male  adulators  of  the  female 
sex  who  have  been  so  assiduously  discovering  the 
miserable  shortcomings  of  their  own.  Nevertheless 
I  have  spoken  of  them  in  terms  which  should  have 
pleased  them,  for  the  terms  have  implied  that  they 
had  in  some  measure  contracted  themselves  out  of 
the  sex  whose  demerits  they  have  sung. 

And  so  I  had  nothing  to  recant  when  M.  Soyer 
came  upon  the  scene  to  show  woman  that  she  had 
to  wait  for  a  man  to  teach  her  how  food  could  be 
cooked  in  the  most  effective  fashion.  Having  pre- 
served my  faith  in  man,  in  his  achievements  and 
capacities,  having  realised  that  most  of  the  good  work 
done  in  the  material  world  has  been  man's  and  must 
continue  to  be  his,  the  timely  and  portentous  advent 
of  M.  Soyer  did  not  astonish  me — I  could  have  pre- 
dicted that  with  the  hour  the  man  would  come.  And 
he  came  not  to  surprise  me,  but  to  vindicate  my  faith 
in  my  own  sex.  But  to  others  less  stalwart  in  their 
faith,  impressed  by  all  the  chatter  about  man's  muddle- 
headedness  in  the  management  of  the  affairs  of  a 
world  ridiculously  easy  to  manage  on  a  gynascocratic 
plan,  M.  Soyer  came  to  rehabilitate  them  in  their 
own  esteem.    For  consider  what  M.  Soyer  did, 

Man  as  the  Cook. 

Throughout  the  ages  woman  has  cooked  food.  It 
is  a  function,  so  they  say,  thrust  upon  her  by  "  the 
tyrant."  And  I  have  no  doubt  that  when  she  began 
her  culinary  duties  man  showed  her  how  to  perform 


MANKIND'S  TWO  HEMISPHERES  59 


them,  i  have  no  doubt  that  in  some  prehistoric  cave 
some  domestic  drama  was  enacted  that  would  seem 
quite  modern  :  "  Excuse  me,  my  dear,  but  the  next 
diplodoccus  cutlets  I  bring  home  I'll  jolly  well  cook 
myself,  and  you  shall  just  watch  how  the  thing  should 
be  done,  these  are  simply  uneatable ! "  And  I  have 
no  doubt  that  long  before  Prometheus  stole  the  fire 
of  the  gods  some  primitive  male  person,  sitting  down 
on  his  haunches  outside  his  cave,  rubbed  two  pieces 
of  wood  together  while  his  wife  stood  at  the  cave 
entrance  wondering  why  he  did  not  come  in  to  his  raw 
and  cold  collation,  and  wondering  what  devil's  game 
he  was  playing  at  with  two  sticks.  And  man,  who 
invented  fire,  unquestionably  told  woman  to  what 
purpose  it  might  be  put  and  how  to  apply  it.  And 
then  he  left  her  to  her  work — having  other  things  to 
do  himself — and  for  countless  generations  he  has  been 
satisfied  with  her  cooking — though  taking  care  to 
do  it  himself  when  it  was  necessary  to  excel  for  the 
palates  of  kings,  and  emperors,  and  such.  But  though 
woman  has  had  a  virtual  monopoly  of  the  cooking  art 
she  has  invented  nothing — not  even  a  frying-pan — 
to  improve  and  further  it.  To  each  man  who  has 
cooked  there  have  been  a  million  women  who  have 
tried  to,  The  kitchen  has  been  her  domain — so  much 
her  domain  that  she  revolts  against  the  tyranny  which 
keeps  her  there,  wasting  her  valuable  time  and  trifling 
with  her  unused  talents.  And  yet — and  yet — into 
her  own  domain  it  is  reserved  that  a  man  shall  enter 
and  show  her  again  how  things  shall  be  done. 

So  she  is  not  supreme  even  in  her  own  sphere.  She 
must  be  a  disciple  even  in  her  own  school.  Even  on 
her  own  ground  she  is  beaten.  M.  Soyer's  very  name 
suggests,  not  fancifully,  the  supremacy  of  man.  Be- 
tween "  Soyez  !  "  and  "  Soyons  !  "  there  is  all  the 
difference  between  to  will  and  to  wish — between  man 
and  woman.  He  is  the  dynamic  force,  the  creator, 
the  originator,  the  imperative  voice.  She  is — some- 
times charming ! 


60  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Man  the  Originator. 

And  so  it  does  not  surprise  me  that  a  man  has  again 
come  along  to  remind  us  that  man  is  still  the  origin- 
ator. He  has  not  only  taught  the  housewife — he  has 
filled  her  with  a  new  enthusiasm  for  her  duties.  He 
has  even  been  hailed  as  the  benefactor  of  the  Bachelor 
Girl — that  summit  of  female  emancipation  and  in- 
dependence, that  defiant  exemplar  of  "  the  cause  " — 
the  woman  who  was  to  make  an  Adamless  Eden  out 
of  a  chintz-covered  three-roomed  flat,  and  show  man 
how  unnecessary  he  was  to  her  existence.  And  now 
a  man  has  come  along  into  this  Adamless  Eden  to 
show  her  how  she  can  cook  her  lonely  rasher  ! 

But,  as  I  say,  it  did  not  surprise  me.  It  is  all  of  a 
piece  with  everything  else  that  man  has  accomplished. 
Supreme  in  his  own  sphere — in  war,  in  ships,  in  coal 
mines,  in  the  building  of  bridges,  in  the  City  Police,  on 
the  Stock  Exchange,  in  the  arts,  philosophy,  and  ethics 
— he  also  has  found  time  not  only  to  make  love  to 
woman,  and  to  provide  her  with  a  home,  but  to  furnish 
her  with  the  indispensable  aids  for  running  it — to  help 
her  to  accomplish  the  one  task  he  has  "  assigned  "  to 
her.  Woman  has  used  the  needle  for  a  good  many 
ages,  but  man  invented  the  sewing-machine  to  save  her 
fingers.  She  has  been  washing  clothes  for  many,  many 
years,  but  man  has  invented  magic  soaps  and  wringers 
and  mangles,  and  has  equipped  laundries  with  electrical 
machinery  to  save  her  knuckles.  She  has  been  sweep- 
ing carpets  for  many  generations,  but  man  has  provided 
her  with  carpet-sweepers  and  vacuum  cleaners  to  save 
her  back.  He  has  given  her  patent  mops  to  save  her 
from  housemaid's  knee  —  potato  peelers  to  save  her 
from  cutting  her  fingers.  He  has  compounded  wonder- 
ful baby  foods  to  save  her  offspring  from  her  own 
deficiencies.  He  has  designed  her  dresses,  and  dis- 
tilled perfumes  for  her  to  exhale.  Supreme  in  his  own 
sphere,  he  has  shown  her  that  she  is  dependent  on  him 
for  a  good  many  things  even  in  hers.  He  has  taught 
her  everything  she  knows,  except  what  Dame  Nature 
taught  her — and  what  Eve  taught  Adam  ! 


MANKIND'S  TWO  HEMISPHERES  6i 


Woman's  Domestic  Functions 
in  the  Community. 

Well,  after  that  pleasant  little  interlude  with  M. 
Soyer,  if  anybody  any  longer  talks  of  equality  between 
man  and  woman  in  the  physical  and  material  sphere, 
at  any  rate,  he  or  she  has  to  answer  the  question 
of  how  it  comes  about  that,  outside  the  home,  the 
world  can  be  carried  on  by  man  entirely  without 
woman's  assistance  ;  and  that  even  in  her  own  domestic 
sphere  woman  must  go  to  man  if  she  wants  a  thing 
done  better  than  she  could  do  it  herself  The  two 
spheres  do,  then,  overlap — with  this  important  differ- 
ence :  that  in  the  case  of  woman's  entrance  into  man's 
sphere,  she  is  merely  a  superfluity,  an  intruder,  and 
there  because  she  wants  to  go  into  the  sphere  and  not 
because  the  sphere  needs  her ;  but  in  the  case  of  man's 
intrusion  into  the  sphere  of  woman,  he  goes  there,  if  at 
all,  only  as  a  benefactor. 

But,  in  considering  all  those  industries,  professions, 
and  occupations  lying  outside  the  home  that  man  can 
manage  for  himself,  is  there  not  one  that  woman  could 
do  even  better  ?  Yes,  there  is  one.  At  a  pinch,  man 
could  do  it  himself,  if  woman  insisted  upon  it  and 
absolutely  shut  herself  up  in  the  home.  But  as  a  just 
and  candid  being  man  will  admit  that  there  is 
certainly  one  thing,  outside  the  home,  that  woman  can 
do  better  than  he.  It  is  not  any  handicraft,  demanding 
a  delicate  touch — the  most  wonderfully  delicate 
mechanism  like  certain  scales  used  in  research  work, 
and  such  work  as  very  fine  filigree  or  diamond  cutting, 
is  made  by  man.  There  is  one  thing,  however,  that 
woman  can  do  better,  and  what  is  it  ?  Nursing.  And 
nursing  is  a  domestic  and  even  a  maternal  duty.  If 
you  thought  of  the  occupation  which  next  to  medical 
nursing  she  might  do  rather  better  than  man,  you 
would  say  :  Teaching — at  any  rate,  teaching  children 
and  girls.  And  that,  too,  is  a  domestic  and  a  maternal 
function.  After  nursing  and  teaching  there  is  nothing 
else  that  I  or  any  man  can  think  of  that  woman  would 
do  better  than  man,  outside  the  home — not  even 


62  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


charing  and  cleaning  city  offices.  That,  too,  is  a 
domestic  duty,  but  men  perform  it  quite  competently 
and  much  more  quickly  than  the  poor  creatures  to 
whom  it  is  really  often  a  dreadful  drudgery.  We  find, 
then,  that  in  the  sphere  that  "  man  has  assigned  to 
woman  "  man  can  even  enter  with  advantage  ;  whilst 
in  the  sphere  that  man  has  "  taken  to  himself"  woman 
is  inessential  to  it  altogether,  but  is  of  advantage  to 
him  in  two  occupations,  and  those  two  occupations 
are  really  her  own  domestic  occupations  carried  out 
into  the  external  world.  Could  any  proof  be  clearer 
that  the  sphere  which  man  has  "  taken "  to  himself 
and  that  which  he  has  "assigned"  to  her  are  not  a 
fanciful  or  arbitrary  delimitation,  but  are  in  strict 
accordance  with  each  other's  natural  capacities  ?  We 
are  justified,  then,  in  saying  that  man  is  rightly 
supreme  in  his  own  domain  and  woman  rightly 
supreme  in  hers,  and  that  whatever  individual  men  and 
women  may  do  the  sphere  of  duty  in  life  for  each  sex 
is  mapped  out  as  clearly  as  England  is  marked  out 
from  France  on  the  map. 

The  Channel 
that  Divides  Sex. 

But  the  Channel  that  flows  between  England  and 
France,  though  it  divides  them,  yet  unites  them.  It 
enables  Englishmen  to  pass  into  France,  and  French- 
men to  pass  into  England.  We  do  not  find  that 
absurd  or  unnatural — it  is  well  that  France  and 
England  should  meet  on  common  ground  (if  the 
Channel  may  be  so  alluded  to)  and  though  the  English- 
man is  rather  more  at  home  on  the  common  ground 
than  the  Frenchman,  both  often  cross  over  into  each 
other's  domain.  So  it  is  between  man  and  woman  in 
our  own  land.  The  channel  of  sex  divides  them,  but 
their  common  humanity  and  race  unites  them,  and 
each  meets  on  the  common  ground  of  their  human 
needs. 

But  just  as  we  cannot  conceive  Englishmen  migrating 
in  a  body  to  France,  or  Frenchmen  performing  the 


MANKIND'S  TWO  HEMISPHERES  63 


counter  feat,  just  as  we  cannot  conceive  Frenchmen 
and  Englishmen  in  a  body  de-nationalising  themselves, 
so  we  cannot  conceive  men  and  women  as  inter- 
changeable parts  in  the  social  mechanism.  England 
might  migrate  to  France  en  bloc,  and  France  might 
perform  the  reciprocal  action,  but  it  would  then  be  hard 
to  say  what  names  should  figure  on  the  map,  and 
whether  ancient  Gaul  should  not  compromise  by 
calling  herself  Anglo-Francia  and  England  call  he-self 
something  or  other  like  it,  the  other  way  round.  And 
man  and  woman  might  so  invade  each  other's  domain 
that  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  whether  the  very  names 
that  denote  sex  would  not  have  to  be  compromised  to 
describe  the  horrid  hybrid  product.  But  both  French- 
men and  Englishmen,  and  both  man  and  woman,  are 
by  the  conditions  of  their  existence  prevented  from 
committing  any  such  act  of  topsy-turvydom.  To  do 
them  justice,  neither  the  Frenchman  nor  the  English- 
man wants  it — each,  in  his  different  way,  is  proud 
and  satisfied  with  his  own  nationality.  And  man  and 
woman — in  the  mass — are  just  the  same.  Each 
recognises  the  territory  of  the  other,  and  each  respects 
his  and  her  natural  state.  There  are  exceptions,  of 
course.  Some  Frenchmen  have  become  anglophiles  by 
long  residence  in  England  — but  the  woman  who  covets 
a  dwelling  in  man's  territory  is,  perversely  enough,  not 
an  androphile,  but,  if  anything,  an  androphobe. 

Common  Ground. 

We  may  carry  the  analogy  a  little  further  without 
straining  it.  Though  Frenchmen  and  Englishmen 
have  their  own  separate  pride  of  nationality — just 
as  normal  men  and  women  have  their  own  natural 
pride  of  sex — and  though  they  differ  in  many  ways, 
and  have  even  quarrelled  at  times,  yet  happily  there 
is  an  entente  cordiale  between  them  which  maintains 
the  happiest  relations,  and  there  is  much  common 
ground  that  they  occupy  in  relations  that  are  neither 
French  nor  English,  but  relations  of  art,  science,  and 
even  politics  wherein  both  are  of  accord. 


64 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


So  it  IS  between  man  and  woman.  Lying  in  the 
gulf  between  sex,  even  encroaching  here  and  there 
on  each  other's  territory,  is  a  field  large  enough  for 
their  common  action  and  the  association  of  each  with 
the  other.  But  woman  can  no  more  become  man — 
in  any  conception  we  can  make  of  life — than  France 
can  become  England  in  any  development  of  cosmo- 
politanism that  we  can  foresee.  The  true  Frenchman, 
I  am  sure,  never  wishes  to  become  anglicised — no 
Englishman  I  ever  met  wished  he  were  a  Frenchman  ; 
and  nothing  so  bizarre,  one  hopes,  can  ever  come  to 
pass  as  that  man  should  wish  to  effeminise  himself 
and  woman  should  try  to  make  herself  a  man. 

Now  it  is  possible  that  a  rare  Frenchman  sometimes 
asks  himself,  "  Why  on  earth  am  I  a  Frenchman  and 
not  an  Englishman  ? "  ;  just  as  one  has  sometimes 
heard  a  young  girl  say,  "Oh,  why  am  I  not  a  man  !  " 
In  each  case  the  explanation  is  simple — they  were 
both  born  so.  And  just  as  the  geographical  difference 
is  the  deciding  factor  of  nationalitx-  in  the  Frenchman's 
case,  so  physical  difference  is  the  deciding  factor  in 
the  case  of  sex. 

We  have  now  seen  how  far  physical  difference  has 
carried  man  and  woman — it  has  delimited  their  spheres. 
And  the  physical  difference  has  thrown  into  relief  the 
quality  of  physical  force,  making  man  superior  to 
woman  in  the  exercise  of  force,  solely  because  his 
physical  difference  happens  to  make  him  stronger. 
Having  now  seen  how  man's  physical  difference  from 
woman  has  produced  the  outstanding  fact  that  in  his 
relations  to  the  State  he  is  independent  of  woman 
altogether,  we  have  now  to  consider  whether  the 
quality  of  force  has  any  necessary  connection  with 
the  State,  making  the  exercise  of  it  inherent  in 
government.  In  other  words.  What  has  force  got 
to  do  with  the  vote  ? 


CHAPTER  VII. 


The  Man  Behind  The  Vote. 

POWER  ESSENTIAL  TO  A  VOTE — MORAL  FORCE  AND 
PHYSICAL  FORCE — THE  MORALITY  OF  FORCE — THE 
NEED  FOR  PHYSICAL  FORCE — A  WORKING  MODEL 
OF  PHYSICAL  FORCE— MALE  MILITARY  SERVICE — 
IDEALISTS  AND  PHYSICAL  FORCE. 


CHAPTER  VII, 


The  Man  Behind  The  Vote. 

If  we  want  to  understand  what  relation  force  has  to 
a  vote,  the  obvious  thing  to  do  is  to  consider  what  a 
vote  is,  A  vote,  say  the  Suffragists,  is  an  opinion  ; 
and  that  is  quite  true.  It  is  as  true  as  saying  that  a 
gun  is  a  piece  of  mechanism.  A  vote  is  an  opinion, 
certainly,  but  the  difference  between  a  vote  and  an 
opinion  merely  is  that  one  is  merely  an  opinion,  but 
a  vote  is  an  opinion  that  can  be  enforced.  The  differ- 
ence between  a  vote  and  an  opinion,  in  short,  is  the 
difference  between  a  charged  cartridge  and  a  blank 
cartridge.  They  both  look  very  much  the  same,  but 
the  similarity  ends  with  the  outward  appearance.  And 
a  parliamentary  vote  looks  a  very  harmless,  peaceful, 
and  amiable  way  of  saying,  "  This  shall  be  done  !  " — 
any  woman  or  child  could  mark  the  paper — but  the 
value  of  a  vote  depends  not  alone  on  the  intelligence 
which  expresses  the  opinion  (as  to  which  much  might 
be  said)  but  upon  the  force  behind  it  that  gives  it  any 
validity.  The  force  may  be  in  reserve  and  not 
apparent,  but  the  point  is  that  it  is  in  reserve,  if 
needed. 

Power  Essential 
to  a  Vote. 

Even  a  shareholder's  vote  is  a  vote  only  because  of 
the  power  behind  it.  At  a  turbulent  meeting  of 
shareholders  you  may  sometimes  see  a  motion  pro- 
posed and  seconded  to  the  effect  that  some  policy  or 
other  shall  be  forced  upon  the  Board.  Hands  are  held 
up,  a  poll  demanded,  and  the  superior  force  carries 
the  day — the  force  employed  in  this  case  being  the 
number  of  pounds  sterling  possessed  respectively  in 

67 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


tne  concern  by  the  victors  and  the  vanquished.  Each 
man  backs  his  opinion  by  the  power  of  his  purse — 
and  hence  his  opinion  becomes  a  vote. 

But  the  matter  does  not  end  there,  though  it 
appears  to  do  so.  It  really  appears  as  though  mere 
money  carries  the  day,  but  in  reality  it  is  physical 
force  that  wins,  even  in  the  peaceful  vote  of  a 
shareholders'  meeting.  For  suppose  the  vanquished 
refused  to  accept  defeat  —  suppose  the  directors, 
though  outvoted,  persisted  in  ignoring  the  policy 
thrust  upon  them  by  the  vote.  Such  things  rarely 
happen,  but  the  point  is  that  they  may,  and  they 
do  not  happen  often  only  because  of  that  ultimate 
factor  in  government — force.  The  shareholders  then 
invoke  the  law  of  the  land  to  aid  them,  and  the 
judge  (in  such  a  case  no  jury  happens  to  be  necessary) 
gives  his  vote  that  the  directors  shall  carry  out  the 
policy  voted  by  the  shareholders,  even  if  it  involve 
the  removal  of  the  directors  from  the  Board.  And 
again  the  judge's  vote  has  validity  only  because  of 
the  physical  force  held  in  reserve  to  enforce  it.  Still 
the  directors  might  resist,  and  it  might  then  be  that 
their  physical  expulsion  from  their  own  works  and 
offices  became  necessary.  But,  to  the  very  last,  the 
physical  force  held  in  reserve  is  really  operative  all 
the  time,  for  a  shareholder's  legal  vote  is  held  up  by 
the  law  of  the  land,  and  the  law  of  the  land  is  upheld 
by  the  physical  force  at  the  disposal  of  all  govern- 
ments that  effectively  govern,  and  the  physical  force 
which  the  government  controls  and  moves  about  is 
that  of  men. 

It  is  true  that  in  practice  the  process  does  not  work 
out  by  a  series  of  defiances  met  and  overcome  at 
each  stage  by  superior  force ;  and  it  is  true  that  the 
shareholders,  in  giving  their  vote  and  the  directors 
in  accepting  it,  take  the  vote  as  the  end  of  the 
matter.  But  that  is  because  we  live  under  a  system 
of  settled  law  and  government,  upheld  in  the  last 
resort  by  force ;  and  the  vote  goes  through  only 
becau.se  both  shareholders  and  directors  know  quite 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  VOTE  69 


well — so  well  that  they  do  not  stop  to  think  a  second 
about  it — that  a  legal  thing  will  be  supported  by  the 
law  of  the  land,  and  that  the  law  of  the  land  will  be 
supported  by  sufficient  force  to  compel  its  obedience. 
Thus  we  may  say  that  even  the  vote  of  a  shareholders' 
meeting  (which  in  itself  is  a  vote  only  because  it 
represents  one  kind  of  force)  depends  for  its  real 
validity  upon  physical  force. 

Moral  Force  and 
Physical  Force, 

But,  say  the  Suffragists,  that  sort  ot  argument  may 
be  all  very  well  for  some  South  American  republic, 
but  in  our  country  we  are  governed  by  public  opinion, 
by  moral  force.  Public  opinion — an  unstable  and  very 
unascertainable  quantity — may  influence  the  giving  of 
votes,  but  it  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
validity  of  the  votes  given.  One  shareholder's  speech 
may  influence  another  shareholder  to  vote  in  a  given 
way,  but  it  is  not  the  first  shareholder's  speech  that 
makes  the  vote  of  the  second  shareholder  a  valid  and 
effective  thing.  And  moral  force  is  merely  a  factor  in 
the  formation  of  public  opinion — though  that  does  not 
mean  that  public  opinion  is  always  a  moral  force.  It 
may  be  merely  an  hysterical  and  irrational  clamour. 

But  moral  force  and  public  opinion  undoubtedly 
influence  votes,  often  for  good,  and  in  the  formation  of 
that  general  influence  women  have  their  share,  and 
may  beneficently  exercise  it,  though  they  do  not 
possess  the  vote — and  that  for  the  excellent  reason 
that  they  stand  entirely  outside  that  power  which  is 
called  upon  to  enforce  it.  And  a  vote  without  the 
power  behind  it  to  give  it  force  is  merely  an  opinion  ; 
but  if  it  is  an  opinion  that  pretends  to  have  behind  it  a 
force  it  does  not  possess,  then  sooner  or  later,  in  some 
sudden  crisis,  the  vote  which  is  really  nothing  more 
than  an  opinion  falls  into  contempt. 

It  is  obvious  that  moral  force,  though  it  may  in- 
fluence a  government,  does  not  govern.  If  it  did,  we 
should  need  no  government  at  all,  but  each  man  would 


70 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


be  a  law  to  himself — and  that  would  no  doubt  be  an 
excellent  thing,  except  that  one  man's  view  of  what 
was  morally  right  would  come  into  conflict  with  other 
men's,  and  they  would  come  to  blows,  and  the  victors 
would  form  a  government,  and  the  vanquished  would 
have  to  accept  the  inevitable,  and  so  we  should  soon 
come  back  to  where  we  are  already,  except  that  it 
would  clearly  be  understood  that  when  the  majority 
said  a  certain  thing  should  be  done,  by  voting  for  it, 
they  meant  it  to  be  quite  understood  (to  save  a  pitched 
battle  for  every  fresh  law)  that  they  meant  exactly  what 
they  said. 

The  Morality  of  Force. 

But  the  opinion  is  nevertheless  held  that  if  moral 
force  does  not  actually  govern  the  world,  it  ought  to  — 
which  is  not  the  same  thing,  however.  But  that 
opinion  is  held  in  strange  places.  Mr  Cecil  Chap- 
man, for  instance,  who  is  a  London  stipendiary  magis- 
trate, as  well  as  a  Suffragist,  recently  uttered  the 
aphorism  :  "  So  far  as  the  world  is  governed  by  physical 
force,  it  is  wrongly  governed."  It  is  a  tenable  opinion, 
but  strange  in  the  mouth  of  a  magistrate,  who  daily 
has  to  listen  sympathetically  to  a  policeman  telling 
him  :  "  As  the  prisoner  would  not  go  away,  and  became 
very  abusive,  your  worship,  I  took  him  into  custody  ! " 
and  who  daily  has  to  utter  the  formula,  "  Ten  shillings 
or  fourteen  days  !  "  The  opinion  is  to  be  respected,  no 
doubt,  but  the  man  who  sincerely  holds  it  must 
certainly  feel  that  he  has  been  too  complacent  towards 
the  unkind  fate  that  offered  to  make  him  a  stipendiary 
magistrate  in  a  London  police  court. 

But  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  opinion  is  entitled  to 
more  respect,  in  a  world  of  realities,  than  one  gives  to 
any  other  amiable  delusion.  It  belongs  to  the  same 
order  of  opinion  as  that  which  would  hold,  "  So  far  as 
the  day  is  divided  into  day  and  night,  it  is  wrongly 
divided."  For  we  cannot  well  conceive  of  a  world  in 
which  phj'sical  force  did  not  prevail.  Physical  force  is 
not  an  immoral  force — it  is  merely  a  non-moral  force 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  VOTE  7i 


capable  of  being  set  in  motion  by  both  moral  and 
immoral  impulses.  Before  we  condemn  an  act  of 
physical  force,  we  must  enquire  into  the  purpose  for 
which  it  is  used.  And  it  so  happens  that  not  only 
mankind  as  a  race,  but  man  as  a  sex,  can  wield 
physical  force  morally.  Man  is  a  very  fit  person  to 
exercise  physical  force,  because  he  is  also  a  morally 
perceptive  being,  and  combines  the  two  forces,  at  their 
highest  in  combination,  in  his  own  personality.  If  he 
has  produced  Samsons  and  Sandows,  he  has  also  pro- 
duced Platos  and  Tolstoys — moral  giants  as  well  as 
physical  giants. 

Moreover,  physical  force  does  not  necessarily  mean 
brute  force,  as  Suffragists  so  often  try  to  make  out 
when  they  answer  the  physical  force  argument  by 
saying  that  that  means  that  a  navvy  should  rule  men 
like  Herbert  Spencer.  For  physical  force  does  not 
necessarily  mean  brute  and  primitive  physical  force — 
the  strength  of  an  elephant  is  laid  low  by  a  bullet  not 
as  big  as  one  of  its  little  eyes.  And  though  if,  by  kind 
permission  of  the  Rev.  F.  B.  Meyer,  Mr  Johnson  had 
defeated  Bombardier  Wells  in  an  elemental  bruising 
match,  the  black  people  of  the  earth  would  have  em- 
braced the  illusion  that  the  black  man  was  proving 
himself  as  good  a  man  as  the  white,  the  result  would 
not,  as  we  know  very  well,  have  justified  that  con- 
clusion. For  physical  force  can  be  directed  by  in- 
telligence just  as  much  as  it  can  be  inspired  by 
morality,  and  the  white  man  would  not  fight  the  black 
man  with  his  fists  any  more  than  with  a  bow  and 
arrow.  Man  has  produced  not  only  his  Jem  Maces  and 
J.  L.  Sullivans,  but  his  Napoleon  and  Napoleon's  victor. 
Chief  Superintendent  Wells  of  the  Metropolitan  Police 
— a  familiar  personage  to  Suffragists — could  have  done 
much  physical  damage  to  the  militant  ladies  if  he  had 
not  so  intelligently  disposed  and  controlled  his  forces 
that  the  militant  ladies  were  enabled  only  to  do  the 
minimum  amount  of  damage  even  to  themselves.  Man 
is  therefore  an  excellent  repository  of  physical  force, 
for  allied  to  that  capacity  are  the  capacities  of  intelli- 


72 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


gence  and  morality  to  direct  and  inspire  it.  And  so 
though  the  world  is  governed  by  physical  force — i.e., 
by  man — there  are  safeguards  against  its  improper  use, 
so  that  we  may  vary  the  magisterial  aphorism  and  say, 
"  Though  the  world  is  governed  by  physical  force, 
man's  intelligence  and  morality  help  to  make  it  rightly 
governed."  The  brute  who  beats  his  wife  governs,  for 
the  time  being,  by  physical  force ;  but  so  does  the 
policeman  who  takes  him  into  custody  ;  and  so  does 
Mr  Cecil  Chapman  himself,  who,  I  hope,  suffers  no 
spiritual  agonies  when  he  gives  him  a  good  stiff 
sentence. 

The  Need  for 
Physical  Force. 

It  is  not  merely  clear  that  physical  force  governs  the 
world,  but  so  clear  that  even  those  who  least  like  to 
admit  it  do  admit  it.  But  the  Suffragists  never- 
theless contend  that  while  the  rest  of  the  world 
may  be  so  governed,  Great  Britain  is  not.  "  Great 
Britain  is  merely  governed  by  votes,  and  as  we  are  a 
law-abiding  people,  physical  force  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  matter  in  practice,  whatever  it  may  have  to  do 
with  it  in  theory."  So  they  contend.  But,  as  we  have 
seen  what  a  vote  is,  that  contention  is  merely  the 
repetition  of  a  fallacy  already  demolished.  Still  we 
will  test  the  question  on  the  facts  as  well  as  by  theory. 

To  begin  with,  we  are  not  all  a  law-abiding  people 
—every  criminal  in  gaol  is  a  personal  illustration  of 
that  fact.  Nay,  even  the  Suffragists  are  not  law- 
abiding.  There  is,  at  the  moment  of  writing,  a  ridicu- 
lous league  in  existence  called  the  Taxation  Resistance 
League.  It  is  founded  on  the  assumption — which  will 
be  examined  later — that  as  women  do  not  possess  a 
vote  they  should  not  be  called  upon  to  pay  taxes,  and 
so  they  refuse  to  pay  inhabited  house  duty,  income- 
tax,  or  a  dog  license.  One  of  these  ladies  was  un- 
fortunately sent  to  prison  for  her  contumacy,  under  a 
law  which  apparently  does  not  explicitly  say  how  long 
such  offenders  should  be  kept  there.    After  a  week  she 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  VOTE  73 


was  liberated,  and  since  her  release  her  relations  and 
sympathisers  have  contended  with  quite  a  comical 
vehemence  that  the  moral  victbry  lies  with  her.  "  For 
the  Government  must  have  spent  five  pounds  at  least 
to  recover  four  shillings  and  sixpence,  and  she  was  let 
out  of  prison  in  a  week  !  "  The  moral  victory  may  or 
may  not  have  been  hers — as  she  did  not  pay  the  four- 
and-sixpence  after  all,  I  think  it  was — but  the  physical 
victory  (which  is  the  final  test)  undoubtedly  rested 
with  the  Government ;  for  the  point  is  not  whether  they 
let  her  out  of  prison  when  they  decided  to  do  so,  but 
that  they  sent  her  to  prison  when  they  wanted  to  do 
so,  and  so  vindicated  the  fact  that  government  rests  on 
compulsion  by  physical  force. 

And  herein  arises  the  crowning  absurdity  of  the 
Suffragists  in  their  dilemma  over  this  subject.  They 
deny  that  the  Government  is  based  upon  physical  force, 
and  yet  (often  times  in  the  same  speech)  they  go  on 
to  defend  the  physical  violence  of  the  militant  school, 
and  not  only  to  defend  it,  but  to  threaten  its  renewal 
if  their  demands  are  not  met.  I  allude  to  that  point 
here  merely  to  show  that  physical  force  is  always  so 
near  the  surface  of  any  human  struggle  that  even  those 
who  deny  that  force  rules  the  State,  reach  out,  in  the 
most  natural  manner,  to  seize  the  weapon  of  force  and 
destructiveness  against  the  State.^ 

It  is  such  trifling  with  reason — so  characteristic  of  the 

'  A  Suffragist  who  was  sent  to  prison  from  the  Old  Bailey  in 
January,  1912,  for  the  crime  of  attempting  to  set  fire  to  the  con- 
tents of  letter-boxes,  addressed  the  judge  in  defence  of  her  action, 
and  said  :  "  It  was  felt  that  the  original  methods  of  the  Suffragists 
could  not  be  allowed  to  continue  on  account  of  the  injury  which 
resulted  to  the  women  concerned  ;  and  it  was  therefore  decided 
that  attacks  should  be  made  first  upon  Government  property,  and 
then  upon  the  private  property  of  individuals."  And  Miss  C. 
Pankhurst,  at  Northampton,  Feb.  10,  1912,  said,  "  We  are  going 
to  pester  the  Government  as  we  have  never  done  before,  but  we 
shall  not  sacrifice  precious  bodies  of  delicate  women  to  be  battered 
by  police,  for  it  is  better  to  break  windows  than  women."  Suffrag- 
ists are  constantly  justifying  their  physical  campaign  on  the  ground 
that  men  obtained  their  freedom  by  physical  force.  But  violent 
demonstrations  that  are  abandoned  because  the  demonstrators  are 
themselves  afraid  of  getting  hurt,  become  mere  wantonness. 


74  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


puerilities  of  argument  and  action  marking  theSuffragist 

campaign — that  has  driven  to  the  side  of  their  oppon- 
ents many  who  might  otherwise  hav^e  supported  them 
(that  is  to  say,  people  who  have  paid  no  respect  to  the 
fundamental  objections  against  Woman  Suffrage)  but 
who,  seeing  so  many  absurdities  and  excesses,  have 
taken  the  other  short-cut  of  saying  that  whether  it  would 
be  a  democratic  thing  or  not  to  give  women  the  vote, 
it  would  certainly  be  a  very  foolish  thing,  since  those 
who  make  most  clamour  for  the  vote  have  given  tlie 
most  evidence  that  they  are  the  last  people  to  use  it 
wisely. 

A  Working  Model 
of  Physical  Force. 

To  return  now  to  the  immediate  point,  it  is  precisely 
because  all  people  are  not  law-abiding  that  it  is  still 
necessary  to  retain,  deliberately,  a  form  of  government 
that  depends  for  its  control  upon  force.  But  there 
is  force  in  revolt  as  well  as  in  government,  and  the 
events  of  the  second  week  of  August,  191 1,  came  (in 
timely  fashion  enough)  to  shock  us  with  the  proof  that 
so  long  as  the  muscles  and  passions  of  men  endure, 
just  so  long  must  they  be  reckoned  at  their  potential 
value.  There  is  no  need  to  dwell  upon  the  actual 
events  of  that  week — not  the  fact,  but  what  the  fact 
revealed,  is  all  that  concerns  us  here.  The  best 
evidence  of  the  gravity  of  the  events  of  that  week  is 
that  though  the  Government — a  Government  as  little 
inclined  to  panic  and  to  a  distrust  of  the  populace  as 
any  we  have  ever  had — took  precautions  that  appeared 
to  cover  the  gravest  contingencies,  nobody  felt  that 
the  precautions  went  an  inch  beyond  the  proper  pro- 
visions and  prudence  of  a  Government  determined  to 
maintain  the  reign  of  law  and  order  and  the  public 
safety.  It  was  a  week  that  weakened  and  cheapened 
even  the  prestige  of  the  Vote  and  that  brought  us,  with 
a  sudden  realisation,  up  to  the  blank  brick  wall  that 
Force — in  revolt  or  in  government — is  the  ultimate 
factor  in  politics.    Who  thought  of  Woman  Suffrage 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  VOTE  75 


that  week?  Who  cared  twopence  that  week  for  the 
argument  that  women  would  purify  politics  ?  Where, 
indeed,  did  women  come  into  any  essential  relation 
with  the  State  during  the  week  when  England  stood 
on  the  verge  of  a  precipice  below  which  lay  the  abyss 
of  civil  war  ?  ^ 

That  week  was  a  working  model  of  the  essential 
function  of  government — which  is  to  govern — and  of 
the  instrument  of  this  final  and  essential  function, 
which  is  the  disposal  and  control  of  armed  forces  of 
men.  And  where  did  women,  who  "claim  their  full 
share  in  the  government  of  this  country,"  then  come  in 
to  take  their  share  in  the  very  vindication  of  govern- 
ment ?  Woman  was  not  in  the  ranks  of  soldiers  and 
police  who  were  stoned  and  pelted  with  bricks  and 
bottles,  and  yet  the  soldiers  and  police,  and  they  alone, 
were  the  instruments  of  the  Government's  will  and 
power.  Yet  though  she  was  not  in  the  ranks,  she  was 
represented  there,  and  the  work  done  by  soldiers  and 
police  was  just  as  much  in  the  interests  of  women  who 
have  no  votes  as  of  the  men  who  have.  And  it  was  not 
women  who  were  sworn  in  as  special  constables — 
though  I  am  surprised  that  some  enterprising  Suffragist 
did  not  present  herself  for  enrolment  for  the  reclame  of 
being  refused.  But  the  Suffragists  kept  very  quiet 
indeed  that  week,  for  that  week  brought  us  down  to 
the  bed-rock  of  what  a  government  and  the  State  really 
mean,  and  theory  was  confounded  by  fact. 

Now,  we  are  as  entitled  to  consider  what  would  have 
happened  if  the  situation  had  become  graver  as  we  are 
entitled  to  recall  that  the  situation  was  grave.  It 
might  easily  have  become  so  grave  that  all  the  forces  of 
government  and  all  the  orderly  portion  of  the  nation's 
manhood  would  have  been  engaged  not  only  in  re- 
sisting force  by  force,  but  in  securing  the  distribution 
of  food  under  the  protection  of  force.  We  should  then 
have  seen  no  longer  a  working  model,  but  the  fact 

'  See  the  speech  by  Mr  Winston  Churchill,  then  Honie  Secre- 
tary, at  Dundee,  September,  191 1,  for  his  view  of  the  gravity 
of  the  situation. 


76  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


itself,  of  the  relative  functions  of  men  and  of  women 
in  the  State  as  discussed  in  an  earlier  chapter,  for 
the  men  would  have  been  outside  the  home  securing 
food,  and  the  women  and  children  would  have  been 
staying  at  home,  anxiously  waiting  for  it.  We  did 
not  come  to  that  actual  pinch,  but  that  is  what  was 
involved,  and  our  intelligences  may  bridge  the  slight 
gulf  there  was  between  possibility  and  reality. 

Male  Military  Service. 

But  before  leaving  the  "  physical  force  "  argument, 
some  attention  must  be  paid  to  the  objections  to  its 
validity  that  are  raised  by  Suffragists.  It  is  first  of 
all  objected  that "  the  battlefield  of  maternity  "  counter- 
balances man's  military  capacity  and  service,  and  that 
contention  will  be  dealt  with  in  the  next  chapter.  And 
then  it  is  pointed  out  by  Suffragists  that  all  men  do 
not  fight,  and  that  therefore  the  exclusive  possession 
by  males  of  a  vote  on  the  strength  of  military  capacity 
must  fall  to  the  ground.  But  the  sex  that  wields 
physical  force,  at  the  instance  of  the  State  and  to 
uphold  the  State,  is  exclusively  male  and  not 
female.  And  the  objection  to  the  validity  of  the 
physical  force  argument  on  this  ground  can  be  also 
met  even  by  the  statement  that  if  the  sex  which  is 
called  upon  to  perform  the  function  of  physical  defence 
and  control,  cares  to  excuse  certain  members  of  it  from 
the  actual  performance  of  those  functions  it  may 
logically  do  so  without  depriving  them  of  the  vote, 
on  the  sufficient  ground  that  they  belong  to  the  sex 
which  is  called  upon  to  perform  those  functions.  Or, 
again,  we  may  say  that  the  sex  delegates  the  function, 
in  normal  times  to  certain  specialised  members  of  it, 
as  a  matter  of  sub-division  of  labour,  but  that  the 
liability  rests  upon  the  sex  as  a  whole  in  case  of 
ultimate  need. 

So  that  if  it  is  said  that  all  men  do  not  uphold 
the  State  by  physical  force,  the  reply  is  that  that 
is  only  true  because  all  men  are  not  ordinarily 
necessary  at  one  and  the  same  time  to  uphold  it ; 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  VOTE  77 


but  the  sex  that  does  uphold  the  State,  the  sex  that 
vindicates  its  law  and  order  internally,  and  which 
defends  the  State  externally,  is  the  male  and  not 
the  female  sex.  Moreover,  those  men  who  are  engaged 
in  the  task  of  upholding  the  State  act  merely  as  the 
deputies  of  the  rest  of  the  manhood  of  the  nation, 
but  could  not  act  for  a  day  except  by  its  assent — 
unless  they  were  acting  as  the  representatives  of  the 
State  against  a  revolutionary  movement  on  the  part 
of  a  portion  of  the  manhood  of  the  State,  in  which 
case  we  should  see  the  function  of  male  physical 
force  exhibited  in  its  two  capacities — the  capacity 
that  upholds  government  and  the  capacity  that 
destroys  government.  Moreover,  it  is  at  any  rate 
within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  our  own  nation 
may  some  day  be  driven,  either  by  the  force  of 
external  circumstances  acting  suddenly,  or  by  the 
votes  of  the  electorate  given  deliberately,  to  assume 
national  miHtary  service ;  but  a  State  in  which  all 
men  were  liable  to  military  service,  but  in  which  the 
political  power  had  passed  over  to  a  majority  of 
women,  suggests  a  picture  of  an  ill-balanced  con- 
stitution that  is  too  grotesque  to  be  thought  upon. 

Idealists  and  Physical  Force. 

Then  there  is  another  objection  made  by  Suffragists 
to  the  physical  force  argument — an  objection  to  the 
argumei>t  itself.  It  is  repugnant  to  the  type  of  mind 
that  is  most  favourable  to  Suffragism ;  and  I  can 
even  sympathise  with  the  repugnance,  considered 
ethically  as  a  civilized  emotion,  though  I  have  no 
sympathy  with  it  considered  in  relation  to  the 
rationality  of  the  matter.  For  the  mistake  made 
by  these  objectors  is  that  they  confuse  two  things 
in  their  condemnation  or  repugnance :  they  confuse 
a  mental  recognition  of  the  fact  as  a  disagreeable 
necessity  with  a  moral  sympathy  with  the  necessity 
itself.  But  it  is  not  exalting  physical  force,  or  falling 
down  ecstatically  before  it,  to  point  out  its  function 
In  connection  with  the  State — it  is  merely  recognising 


78  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


facts  as  they  are.  The  only  point  to  consider  is 
whether  there  is  any  relevant  connection  between 
the  claims  of  Suffragism  and  the  fact  that  government 
still  depends  upon  physical  force ;  and  though  I 
respect  the  pacific  ideals  of  the  Suffragists  to  whom 
that  recognition  is  abhorrent,  I  cannot  respect  the 
mind  that  will  not  confront  the  rationality  of  this 
recognition  as  an  argument  against  Woman  Suffrage. 
Herbert  Spencer  hated  physical  force  so  much  that 
he  took  no  pleasure,  he  tells  us  in  his  Autobiography, 
in  reading  that  sanguinary  epic,  the  Iliad  ;  but,  never- 
theless, as  one  possessing  a  rational  mind,  and  also 
a  first  class  intellect  which,  at  any  rate,  cannot  be 
treated  with  contempt,  he  recognised  and  affirmed 
the  validity  of  the  physical  force  argument  when  he 
said  ("  Social  Ethics ")  :  "  Unless,  therefore,  women 
furnish  contingents  to  the  Army  and  iVavy  such  as 
men  furnish,  it  is  manifest  that,  ethically  considered, 
the  question  of  the  equal  '  political  rights,'  so  called, 
of  women,  cannot  be  entertained  until  there  is  reached 
a  state  of  permanent  peace.  Then  only  will  it  be 
possible  (whether  desirable  or  not)  to  make  the 
political  position  of  men  and  women  the  same." 

That  time,  unhappily,  is  not  yet  reached,  and 
whether  it  will  ever  be  reached  no  man  can  say. 
The  present  signs,  at  any  rate,  are  not  favourable 
to  the  mind  that  denounces  the  Anti-suffragist  who 
uses  the  physical  force  argument  as  a  blind  wor- 
shipper of  force.  Indeed,  excluding  altogether  the 
international  and  racial  problems  that  still  show  the 
nations  of  the  world  to  be  in  a  state  of  flux  and 
unrest,  we  may  turn  our  eyes  much  nearer  home  to 
discover,  if  we  have  a  discerning  mind,  in  the  in- 
creasing unrest  and  complexity  of  our  social  existence, 
and  in  the  consequences  that  may  immediately  follow 
upon  the  duty  of  Government  to  uphold  the  social 
order  and  keep  open  the  vital  avenues  of  its  daily 
needs,  and  in  the  slackening  of  allegiance  to  all  forms 
of  authority  that  we  may  see  on  every  hand — in  these 
ominous  signs  we  may  discern  sufficient  indication 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  VOTE  79 


that  the  reign  of  a  millennial  peace  amongst  us  is 
not  yet  at  hand,  and  that  the  "  man's  work "  in  the 
world,  or  in  our  own  kingdom,  is  not  yet  done.  No 
one  but  a  savage  could  rejoice  at  the  fact — nobody 
but  a  fool  can  shut  his  eyes  to  it.  And  when  one 
comes  soberly  to  think  of  some  of  the  problems  that 
may  at  any  time  confront  statesmanship  in  our  land, 
the  demand  of  Woman  Suffrage  here  and  now  must 
strike  the  reflective  mind  with  a  sense  of  the  aloofness 
of  Suffragists  from  all  the  realities  of  life,  just  as  the 
indignation  caused  by  the  alleged  shortage  of  soap  in 
the  concentration  camps  of  a  war-ravaged  country 
struck  the  sober  mind  as  evidence  of  a  total  absence 
of  rationalised  imagination  in  all  those  who  made  it 
a  complaint. 

We  have  now  seen,  I  think,  (i)  that  though  women 
claim  to  take  their  full  share  of  the  control  of  the 
State,  they  are  wholly  inessential  to  it  ;  (2)  that  the 
validity  of  a  vote,  as  an  instrument  of  government, 
depends  upon  the  physical  power  to  enforce  it ;  (3) 
that  the  whole  burden  of  enforcing  it  falls  upon  men, 
and  consequently  (4)  that  though  women  claim  to 
have  a  control  of  the  State  equal  to  man's,  they  are 
ruled  out  absolutely  from  the  function  of  upholding 
the  very  existence  of  the  State. 

These  should  really  be  the  final  considerations  to 
decide  the  claim  of  women  to  vote,  if  we  are  at  all 
to  consider  the  claim  to  a  share  in  the  control  of  the 
State  as  needing  a  corresponding  power  of  service  to 
the  State. 

But  are  there  any  other  considerations  so  over- 
whelmingly strong  in  themselves,  and  on  quite  another 
plane  of  consideration,  as  to  over-ride  those  funda- 
mental objections  ?  Though  the  vote  is  not  woman's 
"  right,"  and  it  is  a  misuse  of  language  to  "  demand  " 
it,  though  the  State  has  absolutely  no  need  of  woman 
at  all  outside  the  Home  and  its  allied  social  functions, 
though  government  rests  ultimately  on  the  physical 
force  which  she  does  not  exercise,  and  though  votes 


80  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


for  women  would  therefore  be  paper  shams,  just  like 
bank-notes  issued  by  a  bank  that  had  not  the  gold 
reserve  to  meet  them — yet,  notwithstanding  these 
objections,  in  themselves  a  complete  a?td  final  answer, 
are  there  any  other  reasons  for  giving  votes  to  women 
which  should  justify  us  in  giving  them  as  an  act  of 
grace — a  concession  from  the  strong  to  the  weak  ? 
It  must  be  admitted,  I  think,  that  they  must  be  very 
strong  reasons  indeed,  and  that  they  must  first  over- 
whelm whatever  answers  there  may  be  to  them  in 
themselves,  before  we  are  called  upon  to  weigh  them 
against  those  fatal  and  final  considerations  hitherto 
presented.  But  to  consider  them  will  bring  us  to 
closer  quarters  with  the  arguments  of  the  Suffragists, 
after  giving  (as  I  think  has  now  been  done)  that  part 
of  the  case  of  their  opponents  which  they  are  com- 
pelled to  leave  wholly  unanswered. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


The  Three  "  Rights." 

VOTES  AND  TAXES — A  CLAIM  AND  A  DELUSION — A 
POLITICAL  WATCHWORD  —  THE  RIGHT  OF  FREE 
SPEECH  —  THE  FIRST  SPEECH  BY  A  CABINET 
MINISTER — PANDEMONIUM — THE  SQUINT  OF  SUFF- 
RAGISM — THE  BATTLEFIELD  OF  MATERNITY — MATER- 
NITY AND  THE  RACE. 


CHAPTER  Vril. 


The  Three  "Rights." 

In  the  last  chapter,  the  concession  of  votes  to  women 
was  spoken  of  as  an  act  of  grace.  But  before  coming 
to  the  consideration  of  the  question  on  that  plane, 
notice  must  be  taken  of  one  claim  that  they  make  to 
the  vote  as  a  right,  and  it  is  the  only  right  that  they 
attempt  to  prove,  so  that  it  is  worth  while  devoting 
a  brief  chapter  to  demolishing  that  proof.  The  par- 
ticular claim  now  referred  to  is  that  their  payment  of 
taxes  in  itself  entitles  them  to  votes,  on  the  principle 
of  "  No  Taxation  without  Representation,"  and  the 
Taxation  Resistance  League  exists  specifically  to  vin- 
dicate the  right  that  is  claimed  to  a  vote  from  the 
fact  that  some  women  pay  taxes  just  as  most  men 
do.  And  it  is  well  to  answer  it  because  that  ever- 
green fallacy,  "  The  lady  and  her  gardener,"  is  in- 
volved in  this  question — the  lady  who  has  not  got  a 
vote  and  pays  taxes  (though  she  probably  derives  her 
wealth  entirely  from  some  male  source)  whilst 
her  gardener,  whom  she  employs,  does  possess  a 
vote. 

Votes  and  Taxes. 

In  November  last  a  lady  doctor,  writing  in  The 
Daily  Chronicle,  raised  this  question  specifically  in  an 
article  which  asked,  in  its  heading,  "  Should  Women 
Pay  Rates  and  Taxes?"  seeing  that  they  have  no 
vote.  On  the  face  of  it,  it  looks  a  very  simple  and 
reasonable  question,  but  when  it  is  examined  it  is  seen 
really  to  belong  to  the  order  of  such  silly-season 
questions  as  "  Do  Bachelors  make  Good  Husbands  ?  " 
and  "  Are  Wives  Happy  ?  "  For  it  all  depends.  And 
the  answer  to  the  question,  "  Should  Women  Pay 


84 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Rates  and  Taxes?"  even  though  they  have  not  a 
vote,  is  that  it  all  depends  upon  the  woman. 

If  she  is  a  sensible,  fair  and  just  woman,  she  will 
say :  "  Yes.  For  the  benefits  I  receive  for  the 
payment  of  rates  and  taxes  are  ample  return  for  the 
money  asked  of  me.  For  my  rates,  I  receive  all 
the  advantages  of  a  wonderfully  organised  municipal 
community — the  streets  in  my  town  are  lit,  the  roads 
are  paved,  the  sewage  from  my  house  is  taken  away 
in  drains  that  1  could  no  more  command,  except  as 
a  ratepayer,  than  I  could  command  the  supply  of 
water  which  is  brought  to  my  house  from  distant 
hills  ;  and  the  sinks  and  pipes  of  my  house  are  linked 
up  with  a  wonderful  sanitary  system.  The  police 
patrol  before  my  home  and  guard  my  property  ;  the 
dustman  calls  to  remove  the  refuse  that,  if  it  remained, 
would  poison  the  atmosphere  surrounding  me  even 
worse  than  it  would  poison  the  atmosphere  surrounding 
my  neighbour.  I  have  a  fine  library  if  I  want  a  book, 
and  a  cheap  bath  if  I  want  a  swim.  I  have  a  thous- 
and advantages  which  I  could  not  obtain  if  I  were  an 
isolated  unit  not  paying  rates,  and  if  anybody  tried 
to  shut  me  out  of  these  advantages  by  declining  to 
take  my  rates,  I  could  invoke  the  law  of  England 
to  enforce  my  share  in  them.  And,  in  addition  to 
these  advantages,  necessary  to  the  last  degree  to 
modern  life,  and  all  the  results  of  the  exertions  of  men, 
I  also  have  a  municipal  vote  which  interests  me  so 
little  that  I  can  with  difficulty  be  persuaded  to  go  to 
the  poll,  so  satisfied  I  am  with  what  is  done  for  me." 
That  is  what  she  would  say  in  answer  to  the  question 
so  far  as  rates  are  concerned. 

A  Claim  and  a  Delusion. 

And  as  to  taxes,  she  would  say :  "  Yes.  For  the 
little  I  pay  is  little  enough  for  the  protection  it  affords 
me  ;  for  the  dignity  it  gives  to  me,  wherever  I  may  be, 
as  a  citizeness  of  the  best  ordered  and  most  respected 
State  in  the  world  ;  for  the  security  of  its  laws,  the 
best  administered  of  any  laws  in  the  world  ;  and 


THE  THREE  "RIGHTS"  85 


for  the  thousand  amenities  and  conveniences  which 
the  State  provides.  And,  finally,  I  receive  the  pro- 
tection of  those  physical  forces  of  government  in 
which  I  take  no  share  and  have  no  part  whatever 
beyond  the  infinitesimal  sum  I  contribute  to  their 
financial  maintenance." 

That  is  how  she  would  answer  the  question  if  she 
were  a  sensible,  fair-minded,  just  and  rational  woman. 
But  if  she  were  none  of  these  things,  but  the  victim 
of  an  overmastering  idea  that  warped  her  judgment, 
she  would  then  join  the  Taxation  Resistance  League, 
and  refuse  to  pay  taxes.  And  she  would  base  her 
resistance  on  the  formula  relied  upon  by  the  League, 
"  No  Taxation  without  Representation."  And  she 
would  imagine  that  that  phrase  gave  her  a  right  to 
something  she  did  not  possess — a  parliamentary  vote. 
So  that  if  she  kept  a  dog  or  a  carriage  or  lived  in 
"an  inhabited  house"  in  Great  Britain  she  would  claim 
the  right  to  have  a  voice  in  the  government  of  an 
Empire  that  comprises  one-fifth  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  globe. 

But  she  would,  nevertheless,  be  basing  her  claim 
upon  a  delusion.  The  maxim,  "  No  Taxation  without 
Representation,"  no  more  means  that  those  who  pay 
taxes  have  a  right  to  a  parliamentary  vote  than  the 
Liberal  watchword  of  "  Peace,  Retrenchment  and 
Reform  "  means  that  every  man  has  the  right  to  live 
in  a  world  in  which  no  wars,  extravagance,  or  un- 
reformed  abuses  shall  flourish.  The  maxim  never 
has  meant  what  the  Taxation  Resistance  League 
thinks ;  means  it  less  than  ever  to-day,  when  the 
franchise  is  not  based  upon  the  payment  of  taxes 
at  all ;  and  is  negatived  at  every  turn. 

If  it  meant  what  she  thinks,  every  boy  who  buys 
a  packet  of  cigarettes  could  make  out  a  case  for  a 
vote :  every  alien  who  lives  in  an  inhabited  house 
could  make  out  a  case  for  a  vote.  But  it  does  not 
mean  what  she  thinks.  Many  people  pay  taxes 
who  can  have  no  vote,  and  who  do  have  no  vote, 
and  who  never  will  have  a  vote.    Not  only  does  every 


86 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


alien  resident  in  this  country  pay  taxes  without  having 
a  vote,  but  even  if  he  lives  abroad  he  is  liable  to 
the  British  Government  for  income-tax  on  that  part 
of  his  income  which  comes  to  him  from  the  United 
Kingdom  when  he  is  alive,  and  is  liable  to  the  Govern- 
ment for  death  duties  on  that  part  of  his  property 
which  is  situated  in  the  United  Kingdom  when  he 
is  dead.  It  is  the  property,  in  fact,  and  not  the  person, 
that  is  taxed. 

A  Political  Watchword. 

Moreover,  thousands  and  thousands  of  men  pay 
tarxes  who  have  no  vote  ;  and  even  if  we  regard  Man- 
hood Suffrage  as  an  accomplished  fact,  there  yet  re- 
main many  males  under  twenty-five  years  of  age 
who  will  still  pay  taxes  without  having  a  vote. 

But  what  does  the  maxim  mean  ?  It  means,  and 
meant,  simply  this  :  That  no  taxes  shall  be  levied 
by  a  King  without  the  consent  of  Parliament.  It  did 
not  mean,  and  never  could  mean  in  a  rational  State, 
that  no  taxes  should  be  levied  without  the  consent  of 
every  individual  who  paid  them.  The  framers  of  that 
maxim  no  more  contemplated  that  it  would  give  every 
taxpayer,  and  therefore  every  woman  who  pays  taxes, 
the  right  to  a  vote,  than  they  meant  that  it  would 
entitle  them  to  three  acres  and  a  cow.  It  is  not  a  part 
of  the  British  Constitution,  as  the  Tax  Resisters 
seem  to  think,  but  merely  an  assertion  of  one  of 
the  most  elementary  attributes  of  parliamentary 
government.  It  is  a  political  watchword  merely — 
a  watchword  of  parliamentary  government  against 
kingly  despotism,  and  has  no  more  to  do  with  the 
basis  of  the  franchise  than  it  has  to  do  with  the  right 
to  a  commission  in  the  Salvation  Army. 

Yet  the  principle  does  find  expression  in  our  Con- 
stitution. And  where  is  it  found  ?  It  is  found  in  the 
Petition  of  Right  which  Lords  and  Commons  and  the 
threat  of  armed  men  forced  upon  Charles  the  First. 
And  what  is  the  form  in  which  it  finds  expression? 
The  words  are : — 


THE  THREE  ' '  RIGHTS ' '  87 


"  That  no  man  shall  be  compelled  to  make  or  yield  any  gift, 
loan,  benevolence,  tax,  or  such  like  charge  without  common 
consent  by  Act  of  Parliament." 

The  Taxation  Resistance  League  is  therefore  march- 
ing to  ridicule  under  the  grotesque  battle  cry  of  a 
sheer  delusion.  And  though  the  Taxation  Resistance 
League  marches  under  the  John  Hampden  banner, 
that  banner  has  no  more  to  do  with  their  cause  than 
"  No  Taxation  without  Representation  "  has  to  do 
with  the  basis  of  the  franchise.  For  John  Hampden 
was  not  a  voteless  man  protesting  against  the  payment 
of  taxes  because  he  had  no  vote.  John  Hampden  was 
a  member  of  Parliament — a  member  of  the  very 
Parliament  that  forced  the  Petition  of  Right  upon 
Charles  the  First,  and  he  protested  against  the  Ship 
Money  being  levied  by  the  king  ivithout  the  consent 
of  Parliament,  as  every  schoolboy  ought  to  know. 
So  that  both  banner  and  watchword  of  the  Taxation 
Resistance  League  have  "  nothing  to  do  with  the  case." 

On  the  wider  question  I  believe  that  the  State 
would  so  little  miss  the  contributions  that  women 
make  to  it,  except  by  indirect  taxation  (which  is 
shared  by  every  youth  who  buys  a  screw  of 
tobacco  and  every  girl  who  buys  an  ounce  of  tea, 
and  for  whom,  at  any  rate,  votes  are  out  of  the 
question)  that  the  State  could  relieve  every  woman 
from  direct  taxation  without  imposing  any  further 
burden  upon  men  than  men  would  be  willing  to  bear, 
if  that  price  were  necessary  to  keep  the  control  of  the 
State  within  their  own  hands.  But  that  price  is  not 
necessary,  for  rates  and  taxes  are  paid  for  value  re- 
ceived. Moreover,  if  that  grievance  were  removed,  its 
removal  would  only  create  a  fresh  one.  For  somebody, 
no  doubt,  would  then  form  a  Taxation  Insistence 
League.  But  if  women  still  insisted  on  paying  taxes 
they  could  send  the  amount  to  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  as  conscience  money.  And  if  they  then 
insisted  on  being  compelled  to  pay  taxes,  well,  no  doubt 
most  of  us  would  by  then  be  out  of  this  mad  world 
altogether. 


88 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


But  if  women  were  relieved  altogether  from  the 
payment  of  taxes,  they  would  still  persist  in  their 
claim  for  a  vote  on  other  grounds  than  that  payment 
of  taxes  gave  a  right  to  vote.  To  which  we  should 
reply  that  we  oppose  giving  them  votes  on  other 
grounds  than  that  a  payment  of  taxes  gave  no  right 
to  a  vote,  so  that  we  should  start  afresh  all  over  again. 
Which  is  just  what  we  now  can  do,  after  clearing  the 
ground  of  the  claim  that  the  payment  of  taxes  gives 
a  woman  a  "  right  "  to  a  vote.  That  claim  being  now 
demolished,  and  being  the  only  specific  "  right "  brought 
to  support  the  demand  for  a  vote,  we  are  now  free 
henceforth  to  consider  the  granting  of  the  vote  to 
women  merely  as  an  act  of  grace. 

For  although  there  is  another  claim  made  to  the 
vote  on  the  ground  of  a  special  qualification,  and 
that  qualification,  strangely  enough,  is  maternity,  it 
hardly  amounts  to  a  claim  by  "  right."  But  it  is 
worth  while  giving  some  little  attention  to  the 
maternity  claim,  because  so  many  people  seem  to 
think  they  are  exercising  their  minds  logically  by 
making  that  claim,  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  they 
are  simply  allowing  their  reason  to  remain  in  abeyance 
and  are  surrendering  their  minds  to  an  unreasoning 
sentiment. 

The  Right  of  Free  Speech. 

But  before  we  come  to  consider  the  "  oattlefield  of 
maternity "  fallacy,  the  chapter  which  exposes  the 
senselessness  of  the  "  No  Taxation  without  Repre- 
sentation "  cry  is  a  fitting  place  for  considering 
another  aberration  of  reason  in  this  strange  con- 
troversy, for  although  it  has  little  to  do  with 
granting  the  vote,  it  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with 
the  rationality  of  those  who  ask  for  it.  It  concerns 
the  right  of  free  speech. 

There  are  certain  people  who  strangely  imagine 
that  the  noisy  "  Suffragettes "  who  interrupt  public 
meetings,  and  who  specially  delight  in  interrupting 
speakers  entirely  favourable  to  their  cause,  are  "  vin- 


THE  THEEE  "RIGHTS"  89 


dicating  the  right  of  free  speech."  But  to  ayy  ordinary 
intelligence  (though  I  fear  that  what  we  call  ordinary 
intelligence  is  really  a  rare  thing)  it  must  be  obvious 
that,  so  far  from  vindicating  free  speech,  those  who 
make  it  impossible  are  positively  preventing  it.  Now- 
adays people  seem  to  allow  themselves  to  be  hypno- 
tised by  a  phrase  without  examining  what  it  means. 
"  No  Taxation  witiiout  Representation  "  does  not  mean 
what  those  who  use  it  think ;  and  "  the  right  of  free 
speech "  does  not  mean  the  right  to  prevent  free 
speech.  But  so  dismal  is  the  outlook  for  our  national 
sanity  that  it  is  possible  to  find  men  and  women  who 
believe  that  those  who  prevent  a  speaker  speaking 
freely  are  vindicating  the  very  thing  that  they  are 
really  killing.  "  The  right  of  free  speech,"  it  should 
not  be  necessary  to  explain,  means  the  right  of  any 
Englishman  to  express  his  opinions  (not  in  themselves 
treasonable)  publicly  upon  any  pubNc  matter  without 
fear  of  the  Crown  or  Government.  John  Wilkes  and 
Sir  Frances  Burdett  were,  of  course,  almost  the  last 
vindicators  of  free  speech,  with  which  principle  is 
linked  the  doctrine  of  "  the  freedom  of  the  Press." 
But  apparently  there  are  people  so  invincibly  ignorant 
and  so  devoid  of  any  power  of  reflection  that  they 
imagine  that  if  those  who  make  free  speech  impossible 
are  ejected  from  a  public  meeting  to  which  they  may 
not  even  have  been  invited,  "the  right  of  free  speech" 
is  being  denied  to  them,  that  is  to  say  to  the  very 
people  who  are  denying  it  to  others.  And  in  such 
inversions  of  all  reason,  in  such  perversions  of  all 
sense,  this  Suffrage  campaign  is  so  rich  that  it  is 
worth  whiJe  paying  a  little  detailed  attention  to  the 
most  conspicuous  example  of  the  denial  of  free  speech 
that  has  marked  the  campaign. 

The  First  Speech  by 
a  Cabinet  Minister. 

On  December  5,  1908,  Mr  Lloyd  George  was  an- 
nounced to  deliver  an  important  speech  to  a  meeting 
convened  by  the  Women's  Liberal  Federation  in  the 

a 


90  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Albert  Hall.  It  is  important  to  notice  that  the  meeting 
was  convened  by  a  certain  political  body,  which  paid 
for  the  hire  of  the  hall  and  went  to  all  the  trouble  and 
expense  of  convening  the  meeting.  But  nevertheless 
it  was  expected  that  women  who  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  political  body  convening  the  meeting  would 
secure  admission  and  would  endeavour  to  "  wreck  the 
meeting";  and  that  is  exactly  what  happened.  But 
circulated  in  the  hall  were  leaflets  addressed  to  the 
militant  Suffragists  by  the  chairwoman,  then  Lady 
M'Laren,  in  which  this  appeal  was  made : 

"  We  have  cast  aside  physical  defences,  and  fair  play  at  this 
meeting  rests  with  you.  For  ourselves  we  ask  nothing — for  our 
guest  and  friend  we  request  a  hearing.  If  you  wreck  this  meet- 
ing you  strike  a  cruel  blow  at  women,  their  organisation  and 
their  cause.  Shall  it  be  said  that  when  a  Cabinet  Minister 
stood  for  the  first  time  on  a  Suffrage  platform  to  plead  for 
woman's  freedom  women  would  not  hear  him  ?  In  the  name  of 
our  common  womanhood  and  our  common  cause,  I  entreat  your 
courtesy.    Whatever  you  do,  we  renounce  all  retaliation. 

"Nora  M'Laren." 

Now,  no  person  could  be  found  alive  and  sane  to 
doubt  that  if  such  an  appeal  had  been  addressed  to 
men — an  appeal  so  courteous,  so  unprovocative,  so 
reasonable,  so  perfectly  unimpugnable  as  an  appeal 
to  manners  and  the  barest  intelligence,  an  appeal,  in 
fact,  so  abject — no  man  in  any  audience  would  have 
defied  it,  for  he  would  have  felt  that  he  was  put  upon 
his  honour  to  behave  properly,  even  though  he  were 
an  interloper.  But  it  is  also  perfectly  certain  that  to 
no  assembly  of  men  would  an  appeal  for  order  have 
been  made  that  renounced  all  retaliation.  And  it  is 
further  perfectly  certain  that  if  any  man  had  defied 
such  an  appeal  to  the  most  elementary  sense  of 
honour  and  decency,  he  would  have  found  himself 
outside  the  Albert  Hall  more  dead  than  alive.  And, 
finally,  it  is  certain  that  no  voice  in  the  land  would 
have  held  that  he  did  not  richly  deserve  his  con- 
tusions. And  now  what  happened  at  the  meeting  of 
women,  to  a  hundred  of  whom  (out  of  some  five  or 
six  thousand)  this  appeal  for  self-control  was  made  ? 


THE  THREE  "RIGHTS"  9i 


The  meeting  was  no  ordinary  meeting.  For  the 
first  time  in  our  history,  as  Mr  Lloyd  George  himself 
also  reminded  the  interrupters,  a  Cabinet  Minister 
stood  on  a  Woman  Suffrage  platform.  So  little 
advanced  was  the  cause,  so  far  was  it  from  being 
a  fully  debated  issue,  so  far  is  it  still  from  being  a 
cause  sufficiently  commended  to  the  country  to  con- 
done violence  if  it  be  not  at  once  conceded,  that  it 
was  not  until  the  last  month  of  the  year  1908  that 
any  responsible  politician  had  ever  consented  to  appear 
on  a  platform  of  its  supporters.  And  Mr  Lloyd  George 
was  not  there  merely  to  support  it,  but  he  was  there 
to  make  a  most  important  pronouncement  of  the  in- 
tentions of  the  Government  in  regard  to  the  cause — 
a  statement  of  intentions,  by  the  way  that  Mr  Asquith 
ratified  to  the  very  letter,  and  then  beyond  it,  in  the 
same  month  three  years  later.  And,  again,  what 
happened  ?  Well,  it  would  be  necessary  to  quote 
column  after  column  of  the  full  descriptive  reports 
to  do  justice  to  that  unparalleled  scene.  But  the 
barest  facts  must  suffice. 

*'  Pandemonium." 

Mr  Lloyd  George,  for  anything  the  meeting  knew, 
might  have  been  ready  to  announce  that  he  had 
resigned  from  the  Liberal  Government  as  a  protest 
against  the  opinions  of  his  chief,  and  would  forthwith 
stand  or  fall  by  "  the  cause "  alone.  He  might  have 
been  ready  and  prepared  to  say  anything,  for  anything 
anybody  knew.  But  before  anybody  could  know 
anything  of  what  he  was  going  to  say,  before  he 
had  left  behind  him  the  bare  opening  words  of  his 
speech,  the  interruptions  began.  Other  speakers  had 
already  spoken,  had  been  uninterrupted,  and  had  sat 
down.  A  resolution  had  been  passed,  a  collection  had 
been  taken.  Nothing  had  happened.  The  women 
who  had  come  to  the  meeting  in  prison  garb  had 
not  yet  melodramatically  opened  their  cloaks  to  re- 
veal their  costume ;  the  dog-whips  they  had  brought 
with  them  were  still  up  their  sleeves  ;  even  their  voices 


92  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


had  been  still.  And  the  chairwoman  had  just  uttered 
the  words,  "  Suffragist  ladies,  we  commend  ourselves 
to  your  courtesy.  Hear  the  message  of  a  friend.  I 
call  upon  Mr  Lloyd  George." 

And,  at  his  rising,  pandemonium  began.  The  dog- 
whip  soon  appeared.  From  every  corner  of  the  vast 
hall  the  frenzied  interruptions  came.  "  Free  speech  " 
was  killed  before  the  speaker  had  got  a  hundred  words 
out  of  his  mouth.  Twice  Mr  Lloyd  George  sat  down. 
And,  at  last,  in  this  meeting  of  w^omen,  the  men 
stewards  had  to  do  the  dirty  work  of  turning  out  a  few 
of  the  hundred  women  who  were  not  only  making  free 
speech  impossible,  but  who  were  setting  at  nought  the 
convenience,  the  peace,  the  very  happiness  of  five  or 
six  thousand  women  belonging  to  a  body  with  which 
the  hundred  women  had  nothing  to  do.  Again  and 
again  and  again  Mr  George  endeavoured  to  raise  his 
voice  above  the  din  ;  again  and  again  the  chairwoman 
made  her  appeals  ;  but  the  meeting  had  gone  to 
pieces.  Here  and  there  two  or  three  women  were 
droning  out,  for  ten  minutes  at  a  stretch,  the  chant, 
"  Deeds  not  words  !  "  in  a  frenzied  monotone.  Others 
were  crying  out  "  The  message  !  Give  us  the  mes- 
sage ! "  Women  jumped  on  the  platform  and  shouted 
insults  at  the  first  Cabinet  Minister  who  had  ever 
stood  on  a  Woman  Suffrage  platform.  Every  sentence 
he  could  manage  to  shout  out  was  countered  by  some- 
thing shouted  back  at  him,  even  when  he  was  actually 
saying,  under  these  grotesquely  unpropitious  circum- 
stances, words  in  praise  of  woman's  judgment,  ability, 
and  aptitude  for  government !  In  short,  the  speech  of 
the  first  Cabinet  Minister  who  had  ever  appeared  on  a 
Woman  Suffrage  platform  became,  even  in  its  quieter 
moments,  an  exercise  of  battledore  and  shuttlecock 
repartee  Ijetween  him  and  Suffragists.  In  the  words 
of  a  sympathiser,  a  woman  writer,  "pandemonium 
reigned  for  two  hours"  during  the  first  speech  made 
by  a  Cabinet  Minister  to  an  audience  of  Suffragists. 

Well,  no  comment  is  necessaiy  on  the  main  fact,  for 
it  defies  comment,  though  the  ordinary  intelligence 


THE  THREE  "RIGHTS"  93 


will  note  the  fact  that  the  creators  of  this  pande- 
moiiium  are  the  driving  force  of  the  Suffragist  move- 
ment. Nor  can  one  comment  on  the  extraordinary 
fact  that  Mr  Lloyd  George's  convictions  apparently 
survived  that  scene,  and  that  he  positively  "  worked 
off"  (no  more  respectful  phrase  is  possible  under  the 
circumstances)  his  peroration,  and  closed  that  speech 
with  the  words,  which  he  was  just  able  to  make 
audible  : 

"...  that  they  should  call  in  the  aid,  the  counsel,  and  inspira- 
tion of  women  to  help  in  the  fashioning  of  legislation  to  cleanse, 
purify,  and  fill  with  plenty  the  homes  upon  which  the  future 
destiny  of  this  great  commonwealth  of  nations  depended." 

These  things  are  amazing  enough,  and  defy  com- 
ment, bijt  what  is  perhaps  less  hmazing  but  more 
disturbing  is  that  there  were  actually  people  in  these 
islands,  which  Montaigne  called  the  home  of  common 
sense,  who  held  that  the  right  of  free  speech  had  been 
denied  to  those  who  would  not  let  Mr  Lloyd  George 
get  three  consecutive  sentences  past  his  lips. 

The  Squint  of  Suffragism. 

The  newspapers,  it  is  true,  were  flooded  with  corres- 
pondence from  people  who  from  that  moment  washed 
their  hands  of  Woman  Suffrage  for  good  ;  but  amongst 
other  letters  were  some  from  extraordinary  people  who 
imagined  that  a  hundred  women  were  vindicating  the 
right  of  free  speech  by  flourishing  dog-whips,  droning 
out  a  mechanical  chorus,  and  making  all  speech  im- 
possible— letters  from  people  who  positively  did  not 
understand  that  the  right  of  free  speech  does  not  mean 
the  right  to  prevent  free  speech,  but  does  mean  the 
right  (apart  from  all  question  of  manners)  to  speak, 
and  to  speak  in  peace. 

But  there  seems  to  be  a  strange  liability  to  a  kind  of 
mental  strabismus  in  all  who  champion  the  cause.  For 
one  of  the  sanest  newspapers  in  the  country,  a  news- 
paper that  holds  up  at  their  highest  the  traditions  of 
English  journalism.  The  Manchester  Guardian,  ex- 
hibited this  strange  perversity  in  its  next  issue.  From 


94  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


one  page  of  that  issue  I  take  three  editorial  references 
to  this  unparalleled  scene.  First,  the  leading  article 
judicially  "  divided  the  shame  evenly."  "  At  all  costs 
and  under  whatever  provocation  there  should  have 
been  no  laying  on  of  hands,  no  violence,  no  ejections." 
Excellent  counsel,  illustrating  marvellously  that 
chivalry  expected  of  man  under  difficult  circumstances 
which  we  shall  afterwards  have  to  consider.  The 
leader-writer's  restraint  and  self-control,  exhibited  200 
miles  from  such  a  scene  and  24  hours  after  it  had  taken 
place,  was  most  praiseworthy.  And  we  all  honour  the 
spirit  of  the  melodramatic  tag  :  "  The  man  who  lays 
his  hand  on  a  woman  save  in  the  way  of  ke-ind- 
ness  ..."  etc.  But  obviously  it  requires  only  the 
merest  extension  of  that  doctrine,  if  it  were  held  to 
apply  to  such  a  scene  as  that,  to  lay  down  the  prin- 
ciple that  no  policeman  should  ever  lay  hands  on  a 
woman  to  take  her  into  custody — and,  indeed,  the 
extension  needed  would  be  very  slight  to  carry  that 
principle  into  effect  if  ever  \v6  got  a  woman's  Parlia- 
ment. 

The  next  reference  on  that  page  shows  the  poison  of 
Suffragism  more  subtly  at  work.  For  "  A  Woman's 
Impressions,"  given  as  a  descriptive  report  of  the 
meeting,  contains  the  amazing  rebuke  to  Mr  Lloyd 
George  that  he  should  not  have  trifled  with  the  meet- 
ing by  making  any  allusion  to  Queen  Elizabeth ! — 
that  he  should  not  have  made  his  speech  in  his  own 
way,  but  that  he  should  have  yelled  out  his  message  to 
begin  with  and  then,  I  suppose,  have  gone  home,  after 
satisfying  the  frenzied  impatience  of  a  hundred  women 
out  of  six  thousand  !  The  passage  in  which  this  strange 
squint  comes  out  ran,  with  the  running  commentary 
that  one  is  forced  to  make  upon  it,  in  these  words  : 

"  He  can  hardly  have  gauged  the  temper  of  the  meeting  he 
was  to  handle."  (The  "temper"  was  that  of  a  sixtieth  part  of 
the  meeting  defying  the  pleasure  and  desires  of  all  the  rest. 
Moreover,  not  the  least  interruption  had  taken  place  to  reveal  to 
him  "the  temper  of  the  meeting"  until  he  himself  arose)  "and  it 
is  surprising  in  one  who  can  be  a  rhetorician  that  he  should  have 
begun  with  academic  references  to  Queen  Elizabeth  ...  Mr  Lloyd 


THE  THKEB  "  RIGHTS  "  95 


George  considers  that  the  position  of  one  who  advocates  Woman's 
Suffrage  is  one  which  still  requires  justification  by  argument" 
(which  was  hardly  strange,  indeed,  when  his  was  "the  first 
speech  ever  made  by  a  Cabinet  Minister"  on  a  Woman  Sufifrage 
platform),  "and  he  had  doubtless  prepared  a  speech  which  would 
in  due  course  have  arrived  from  Queen  Elizabeth  by  gentJe 
degrees  to  the  present  day,  when  he  could  in  ten  minutes  have 
given  the  gist  of  his  message." 

Well,  good  manners,  of  course,  have  nothing  to  do 
with  such  a  case  and  such  a  plea  as  that,  but  I  wonder 
what  on  earth  would  have  been  said  by  the  Manchester 
Guardian,  or  by  any  other  respected  and  respectable 
organ  of  opinion,  if  another  paper  had  allowed  a 
contributor  to  lecture  a  statesman  on  the  very  order 
with  which  he  chose  to  frame  his  speech,  because  a 
hundred  male  rowdies  (not  even  opposed  to  his  cause, 
to  carry  the  thing  into  the  most  rarefied  atmosphere  of 
dizzy  bewilderment)  chose  to  exhibit  a  calculated 
frenzy  of  impatience  ostensibly,  but  not  really,  because 
he  chose  to  lead  up  to  his  point  in  his  own  way  ?  It  is 
difficult  to  say  which  was  the  more  insolent  of  the  two 
— the  offence  itself  or  the  excuse  made  for  it. 

But  the  third  instance  of  mental  strabismus  as  the 
result  of  association  with  Suffragism  is  even  more 
staggering.  It  appeared  also  in  the  editorial  columns, 
and  on  the  same  page,  and  was  not  the  expression  of 
any  irresponsible  contributor : 

"  Probably  Mr  Lloyd  George  would  have  done  more  wisely 
if  he  had  kept  any  general  matter  intended  for  outside  con- 
sumption to  the  end  of  the  speech.  But  the  line  he  took  is  one 
more  of  the  curious  indications  that  even  sympathisers  with  the 
movement  among  men  are  perpetually  failing  to  see  the  real 
position  of  women  on  the  question.  It  is  so  inevitably  a  failure 
that  it  might  almost  become  a  rule  now  that  no  man  should  be 
the  chief  speaker  at  a  meeting  on  Woman's  Suffrage." 

I  could  forgive  the  sanest  man  in  England  if,  after 
reading  such  a  passage,  he  went  out  and  drowned 
himself  out  of  sheer  mental  prostration  and  giddiness. 
A  Cabinet  Minister  addresses  a  meeting  of  Women 
Suffragists  for  the  first  time  in  the  histor)'  of  a  move- 
ment that  has  none  too  many  friends.  He  is  first 
rebuked  for  assuming  that  Woman  Suffrage  still 


96  WOMAN  ADETFT 


requires  "justification  by  argumsnt."  And  then  he  is 
told  that  because  a  hundred  women  out  of  six  thou- 
sand prevent  him  making  a  coherent  speech  at  all,  the 
rule  should  henceforth  be  that  no  male  supporter 
should  show  himself  prominently  on  a  Woman  Suffrage 
platform.  I  agree  that  after  such  an  experience  no 
man  of  spirit  would  want  to  show  himself  at  all,  but 
that  he  should  be  told  to  appear  furtively,  and  to  hide 
behind  the  chairwoman's  petticoats,  and  not  make 
himself  very  visible,  and  not  to  provoke  the  audience 
of  women  by  supporting  their  cause  too  prominently — 
that  these  things  could  be  written  and  the  cause  stiU, 
survive,  is  really  a  very  disconcerting  and  depressing 
symptom  indeed.  Only  one  man  who  ever  lived  could 
really  have  done  justice  to  such  a  situation,  and  that 
was  Dr  Johnson.  But  I  fear  that  even  his  invincible 
sanity  w  ould  have  confessed  itself  beaten,  and  that  in 
despair  he  would  have  drunk  five  pots  of  tea  straight 
off,  and  then  have  settled  down  to  the  adventures  of 
Pantagruel  to  lose  himself  in' what  (Cambronne  not 
then  having  spoken  his  mot  de  Waterloo)  would  have 
been  congenial  company.  There  are,  of  course,  a 
priori  grounds  for  supposing  that  an  eruption  of 
feminism  is  only  possible  in,  and  is  the  very  sign  of, 
an  age  which  is  losing  its  virility  ;  but  the  condonation 
of  the  Albert  Hall  pandemonium  is  in  itself  a  suffi- 
ciently disturbing  indication  of  the  truth  of  that  theory. 

I  have  dwelt  on  that  scene  and  its  condonation  at 
length,  however,  because  it  was  the  shortest  way  of 
correcting  the  truly  extraordinary  notion  that  to 
resent,  and  to  endeavour  to  frustrate,  the  avowed 
intentions  of  people  to  wreck  a  political  meeting  and  to 
prevent  free  speech,  is  to  deny  "  the  right  of  free 
speech."  It  is  only  in  an  age  in  which  the  national 
sanity  is  waning  that  such  a  task  should  be  necessary 
as  to  point  out  that  the  right  of  free  speech  is  the 
right  of  a  man  to  address  a  public  meeting ;  and 
that  the  negation  of  the  right  of  free  speech  is  the 
effrontery  and  unintelligent  insolence  of  those  who 
make  free  speech  impossible. 


THE  THREE  "RIGHTS"  97 


The  '^Battlefield  of  Maternity." 

It  has  been  well  to  sandwich  that  little  matter  of 
the  right  of  free  speech  between  the  consideration  of 
two  other  illusory  "  rig4its " — the  right  to  a  vote 
by  a  payment  of  taxes,  and  the  argument  that  the  fact 
and  act  of  maternity  gives  a  right  to  a  vote.  The 
maternity  fallacy  is,  of  course,  put  forth  as  an  answer 
to  the  physical  force  argument.  That  argument  is 
really  final  and  conclusive  and  unanswerable,  but  in 
a  moment  of  misguided  iiispiration  somebody  suddenly 
remembered  that  if  soldiers  die  in  battle,  women 
sometimes  die  in  childbirth,  and  so  the  phrase  "  the 
battlefield  of  maternity"  was  coined.  It  got  taken 
up  enthusiastically,  and  was  soon  elevated  into  an 
argument.  It  is  not  uttered  irresponsibly,  but  by 
people  who  ought  to  be  able  at  least  to  think  clearly, 
seeing  that  they  assume,  or  are  entrusted  with,  the 
function  of  instructing  others.  It  appears,  for  instance, 
as  a  prominent  argument  in  one  of  the  few  leading 
articles  that  a  certain  London  Liberal  newspaper  has 
devoted  to  reasoning  out  the  cause — for  nine  out 
of  ten  editorial  references  to  the  cause  have  dealt 
only  with  parliamentary  tactics,  and  have  not  even 
endeavoured  to  do  what  must  be  done  before  the 
question  of  tactics  becomes  relevant,  viz.,  make  out 
the  case  for  Woman  Suffrage  by  answering  the  case 
against  it. 

The  "battlefield  of  maternity"  cry  does  not,  of 
course,  attain  the  dignity  of  an  argument — it  is  merely 
an  example  of  the  unreflecting  sentimentalism  that 
marks  the  cause.  If  it  be  the  death  of  women,  or 
the  risk  of  women,  in  childbirth  that  is  set  off  against 
the  male  military  function,  then  we  can  answer  it 
merely  by  saying  that  it  is  not  alone  soldiers  among 
men  who  risk  and  encounter  death  and  injury  as 
the  result  of  doing  work  which  woman  does  not  do. 
For  coal-mining  is  just  as  deadly  a  "  battlefield  "  as 
maternity,  and  railway-shunting,  bridge-building,  ship- 
building and  ship-sailing,  and  other  industrial  and 


98 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


peaceful  occupations,  in  which  most  men  are  working 
for  wages  to  keep  some  women  as  well  as  themselves, 
also  exact  their  toll  of  men's  lives. 

But  the  maternity  argument  is  advanced  also  to 
contend  that  women  serve  the  State  by  being  mothers 
and  continuing  the  supply  of  citizens,  just  as  men 
serve  the  State  by  upholding  it.  Well,  if  it  comes 
to  that,  women  no  more  serve  the  State  by  being 
mothers  of  citizens  than  men  serve  the  State  by 
being  fathers  of  citizens,  and  one  service  must  simply 
cancel  the  other.  The  fact  that  some  women  die 
through  childbirth,  whilst  no  men  die  through  pro- 
creation, has  nothing  to  do  with  the  relative  service 
of  each  to  the  State.  The  only  point  proved  by  that 
difference  is  rtiat  the  sexes  and  their  functions  are 
so  separated  that  a  woman  cannot  be  a  mother  without 
physical  disablement  and  risk,  but  that  men  can  be 
fathers  and  still  go  on  with  their  work  as  though 
nothing  had  happened  except  that  they  hav^e  one 
more  mouth  to  feed.  The  battlefield  of  maternity 
argument,  in  fact,  merely  points  to  one  of  those  many 
differences  of  sex  which  we  are  constantly  encountering, 
but  which  Suffragists  are  constantly  denying.  Their 
main  and  basic  position  is  that  there  is  no  differenoe 
between  the  two  sexes.  "  We  want  votes  because 
men  have  got  votes,  and  we  want  votes  on  the  same 
terms  as  men  have  got  them,"  they  say.  And  if  you 
then  reply :  "  That  is  all  very  well,  but  if  women 
want  votes  because  men  have  got  them,  we  must  first 
consider  the  differences  between  men  and  women," 
then  they  begin  to  point  to  a  few  women  who  are 
doing  men's  work,  and  they  argue  from  isolated  and 
exceptional  examples  the  identity  of  the  two  sexes. 
But  when  it  is  pointed  out  that  even  if  women  here 
and  there  perform  indifferently  some  forms  of  work 
that  could  be  much  better  done  by  men,  they  do  not 
do  the  material  work  of  the  world  nor  uphold  the 
State  in  any  direct  way,  then  a  complete  somersault, 
figuratively  speaking,  is  turned,  and  the  Suffragist 
begins  to  plead  the  very  sex  differences  she  denies, 


THE  THREE  "RIGHTS"  99 


and  to  talk  of  the  exacting  nature  of  maternal  duties, 
and  of"  the  battlefield  where  life  is  born," 

The  Race  and  Maternity. 

But  maternity  is  not  a  battlefield  at  all,  except  that 
it  is  a  warfare  between  natural  causes  and  effects — 
between  mortal  beings  and  the  common  grim  enemy  of 
us  all.  A  man  fights  pretty  much  the  same  battle 
every  time  he  is  down  on  what  may  prove  to  be 
his  deathbed  through  w-orking  for  his  wife  and  family, 
and  going  out  to  business  when  he  ought  to  have 
"  lain  up  "  at  home.  Maternity,  moreover,  is  a  natural 
function  —  soldiering  is  not.  And  a  woman  does 
not  have  children  "  to  serve  the  State."  She  looks 
forward,  not  to  giving  birth  to  "a  little  son  of  Empire," 
but  to  giving  birth  to  her  own  child.  If  she  lived  on  a 
beautiful  tropical  island  alone  with  her  mate,  she  would 
have  just  the  same  joy  and  pains  in  giving  birth  to 
her  child,  although  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a  State 
for  it  to  be  born  into.  In  short  it  is  not  the  State  she 
serves  by  her  maternity,  but  the  race.  The  man  serves 
the  race  just  as  much  by  his  paternity  as  she  does 
by  her  maternity,  but  the  simple  difference  between 
them  is  that  to  serve  the  race  by  perpetuating  his 
species  does  not  interfere  with  his  work  either  for 
the  State  or  for  his  mate,  whilst  for  her  to  serve  the 
State,  first  by  her  maternity  and  then  by  her  maternal 
duties  in  rearing  a  child  that  takes  longer  than  any 
other  animal  to  reach  maturity,  does  incapacitate  her 
for  the  direct  service  of  the  State.  If  women  ceased  to 
be  mothers,  the  State  would  certainly  come  to  an  end, 
as  would  the  Conservative  party  and  the  Liberal  party 
and  the  Votes  for  Women  party.  But  the  same  thing 
would  happen  if  men  ceased  to  be  fathers,  and  there  is 
as  much  connection  between  fatherhood  and  the  State 
as  there  is  between  motherhood  and  the  State — that  is 
to  say  very  little.  For  men  and  women  are  fathers 
and  mothers  not  as  citizens,  consciously  performing 
services  to  the  State,  but  as  normal  beings  gratifying 
their  own  instincts — which  gratification  is  the  only 


100  WOMAN  ADRIFT 

guarantee  for  the  perpetuation  not  only  of  the  State, 
but  of  the  race  whence  States  arise.  Parenthood, 
in  short,  is  an  individual  and  personal  matter,  and 
existed  before  there  were  such  things  as  States.  And 
(to  come  to  the  point  that  immediately  exposes  the 
fallacy)  States  do  impose  compulsory  military  service 
on  men,  but  no  State  can  impose  compulsory  maternity 
on  women.  Indeed,  many  of  the  predestined  and 
irreclaimable  Suffragists  protest  vehemently  against  the 
monstrous  notion  that  all  women  should  be  expected 
to  sacrifice  themselves  to  maternity — "  expected  "  not 
by  the  State,  but  by  social  opinion  merely,  for  there 
has  never  been  any  suggestion  that  the  State  should 
impose  any  pains  or  penalties  upon  those  women 
who  shirk  the  pains  and  penalties  of  maternity,  or 
who  repudiate  the  maternal  function  of  women 
altogether. 

And  so  the  "battlefield  of  maternity"  argument  is 
merely  part  of  the  quibbling  sentimentality  by  which  the 
cause,  in  its  minor  issues,  is  supported.  It  becomes 
nonsense  the  moment  it  is  looked  at  rationally,  but  it 
has  to  be  looked  at,  not  because  there  is  any  point  or 
reason  in  it,  but  simply  because  a  good  many  people 
who  will  not  think  for  themselves  must  have  their 
thinking  done  for  them. 

'  But  "the  battlefield  of  maternity"  argument  is  put 
forward  rather  to  answer  the  unanswerable  "  physical 
force "  argument  than  as  specifically  constituting  a 
"  right,"  as  the  "  payment  of  taxes "  fallacy  is  put 
forward.  That  fallacy,  and  others,  having  been 
disposed  of,  we  are  now  free  henceforth  to  consider  the 
granting  of  votes  to  women  not  as  a  right  at  all,  for 
there  is  no  such  right  either  on  abstract  or  on 
particular  grounds,  but  as  an  act  of  grace.  And  the 
answers  of  Anti-suffragists  to  the  claim  for  the  suffi-age 
as  an  act  of  grace  are  those  which  oppose  it  on  the 
ground  of  expediency. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


The  Two  Kinds  Of  Women. 

NOISE  V,  NUMBERS — WOMEN  AS  ORATORS — THE  OB- 
SESSION OF  SUFFRAGISM — THE  PSEUDO-INTELLECT- 
UALS—THE SOIL  OF  SUFFRAGISM — "STARTLING  THE 
NATIVE" — EXPLOITING  THE  MULTITUDE— SENSE  AND 
SINCERITY  —  A  LITTLE  REFERENDUM  —  NUMBERS 
IGNORED  — THE  WOMEN  WHO  DON'T. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


The  Two  Kinds  Of  Women. 

But  before  we  come  to  consider  the  claim  of  women 
to  votes  even  as  an  act  of  grace,  the  preliminary 
question  must  be  answered  of  whether  women  wa-^t 
votes  at  all — that  is,  women  generally.  "  But  what 
nonsense ! "  it  may  be  said,  "  to  ask  if  women  want 
votes !  What  of  the  demonstrations,  processions, 
imprisonments,  martyrdoms,  and  the  entire  active 
propaganda?  There  has  never  been  a  political 
cause  in  modern  times  carried  on  with  more  energy 
than  the  later  development  of  this  Woman  Suffrage 
campaign."  Well,  we  can  admit  a  good  deal  of  that, 
but  still  not  be  silenced  by  it  by  any  means.  For 
we  must  not  mistake  noise  for  numbers,  or  even  the 
persistence  of  some  for  the  demands  of  the  many.  It 
is  a  fact  that  the  Suffragists  have  displayed  wonder- 
ful ingenuity,  resource  and  determination — not  to 
admit  that  would  be  as  foolish  as  for  others  to  deny 
that  their  campaign  has  been  characterised  by 
absurdities  and  profitless  and  pointless  excesses. 
But  we  must  not  be  too  much  awed  by  the  stage 
army  of  militants  who  pass  through  Bow  Street  at 
recurrent  intervals.  And  apart  from  the  militants 
altogether  the  determination  of  a  comparative  few 
does  not  prove  the  case  that  women  want  the 
vote  at  all.  If  there  are  as  many  women  as  earnestly 
determined  to  oppose  the  vote  as  there  are  women 
earnestly  determined  to  secure  it,  the  two  determinations 
cancel  each  other  so  far  as  affording  any  index  of 
what  women,  speaking  generally,  want.  But  in  ad- 
dition to  those  who  oppose  the  vote  publicly  and  with 
determination,  there  is  a  huge  body  of  women  who 
oppose  the  granting  of  the  vote  when  they  are  asked 

103 


I04  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


to  give  an  opinion  upon  the  matter ;  and  if  there 
is,  further,  an  even  vaster  body  of  women  who  have 
so  little  aptitude  for  politics,  and  take  such  little 
interest  in  politics,  that  even  the  supreme  question  of 
the  "enfranchisement"  of  their  sex  leaves  them 
indifferent  (so  indifferent  that  they  will  give  neither 
a  yea  nor  a  nay  upon  it)  and  if  this  indifference  and 
opposition  is  characteristic  of  the  mass  of  women,  then 
we  shall  know  that  so  far  from  women  wanting  the 
vote,  only  a  certain  few  women  want  it.  And  that 
is  the  truth,  as  will  presently  be  shown,  so  far  as  the 
truth  can  be  ascertained  both  from  negative  and 
positive  evidence  of  the  extent  to  which  the  demand 
for  Votes  for  Women  corresponds  with  any  general 
desire  amongst  women  as  a  sex. 

Noise  V.  Numbers. 

But  it  will  be  said  that  the  women  who  do  want  the 
vote  want  it  terrifically,  passionately,  desperately. 
Let  us  admit  it — though  the  very  superlative  character 
of  those  adverbs  ought  to  make  us  pause.  For  if, 
viewing  some  of  the  actions  by  which  they  supple- 
ment their  desire,  I  were  to  add  the  word  "  hysterically," 
it  would  only  be  carrying  the  topmost  note  of  the 
other  adverbs  into  the  highest  register  of  shrillness 
with  which  they  clamour  for  the  vote.  But  because 
you  do  not  hear  the  w'omen  who  oppose  the  vote 
speaking  in  the  same  shrill  accents,  and  "demanding" 
of  the  Prime  Minister  (at  deputations  during  which  the 
Prime  Minister  is  treated  none  too  civilly)  that  they 
shall  not  have  the  vote,  you  must  not  suppose  that 
their  determination  to  oppose  the  vote  is  any  less  than 
the  determination  of  those  who  ask  for  it.  And  if 
you  say,  "  Well,  at  least  the  women  who  don't  want 
the  vote  haven't  gone  to  prison  to  get  it,"  the  answer 
is  that  apart  from  the  fact  that  going  to  prison  is  not 
going  to  settle  the  matter  one  way  or  the  other,  there 
would  reaHy  be  nothing  gained  by  going  to  prison 
to  protest  against  having  what  they  have  not  got  when 
they  have  not  got  it. 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  io5 


But  it  is  necessary  to  remember  two  or  three  very 
important  things  in  considering  the  apparent  relative 
strength  of  the  two  sections.  The  first  important 
thing  is  that  a  negative  cause  is  always  at  a  disad- 
vantage against  a  positive  cause.  If  there  is  a  certain 
inert  strength  in  one  position,  there  is  a  greater 
dynamic  force  in  the  other.  The  women  who  agree 
with  those  champions  of  the  cause  that  want  the 
vote  feel  that  the  champions  are  at  any  rate  doing 
something — asking  for  something,  getting  forwarder 
somewhere  or  other,  and  not  merely  standing  still. 
And  though  safety,  prudence  and  all  wisdom  may 
lie  in  standing  still  rather  than  in  rushing  onward, 
nevertheless  those  who  ask  for  the  vote,  especially 
if  they  invoke  the  cause  of  the  "  downtrodden,"  seem 
to  be  doing  more  than  those  who  say,  "  let  well  alone, 
and  let  womanhood  develop  on  existing  lines," 

But  it  is  a  grievous  mistake  to  suppose  that  because 
the  women  who  do  not  want  the  vote  do  not  organise 
processions  and  demonstrations  (though  as  a  matter 
of  tactics  I  think  they  ought  to  do),  and  do  not  give 
the  police  a  lot  of  trouble,  and  do  not  indulge  in  the 
spectacular  propaganda  of  the  more  ardent  wing  of 
the  Suffragists,  that  therefore  they  do  not  feel  deeply, 
sincerely,  and  even  passionately  that  the  cause  of 
Votes  for  Women  is  a  mistaken  cause  and  one  which, 
if  it  were  a  successful  cause,  would  bring  women  a 
greater  plague  of  evils  than  any  that  would  be 
removed.  But  the  women  who  feel  these  things  are, 
in  the  mass,  not  voluble  women,  skilled  in  the  arts 
of  public  controversy  (which  always  demand  a  certain 
audacity  of  temperament,  in  male  or  female).  Some 
of  them  are  so  skilled,  and — intelligence  against  in- 
telligence—  they  are  much  more  than  a  match  for  the 
best  spokeswomen  among  the  Suffragists. 

Women  as  Orators. 

And  here  let  me  step  out  of  the  march  of  the 
argument  for  a  moment  just  to  answer  a  point  that 
arises  from  the  last  sentence.    "You  admit,"  it  may 

H 


io6  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


be  said,  "that  the  women  who  are  Anti-sufifragist, 
and  who  publicly  champion  their  cause,  exhibit  a  very 
fine  intelligence  and  capacity  as  public  speakers. 
Does  not  that  prove  that  women  are  not  unfitted 
to  take  part  in  public  life  ?  "  The  point,  of  course, 
is  only  a  debating  point,  and  looks  much  more  for- 
midable than  it  really  is,  but  it  is  quite  good  enough 
to  be  met.  Well,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  even 
the  extremely  intelligent  women  who  publicly  oppose 
the  suffrage  are  not  typical  of  their  sex — not  as 
regards  intelligence,  but  as  regards  their  capacity  for 
public  vi^ork  and  speech.  And  they  do  not  come  out 
into  public  controversy  because  they  wish  to  do  so, 
or  because  the  platform  attracts  them,  but  simply 
because  of  their  compelling  conviction  that  when 
certain  women  arrogate  to  themselves  the  right  to 
speak  for  their  entire  sex,  it  is  incumbent  upon  them 
to  throw  their  prejudices  aside,  and  even  to  try  to 
rise  above  their  own  limitations,  and  come  forward  to 
declare  that  women  do  not  want  votes  as  emphatically 
as  other  women  declare  that  they  do.  This  is  not 
only  a  man's  question  as  against  a  woman's  question — 
it  is  a  question  in  which  one  type  and  ideal  of  woman 
is  opposed  to  another  type  and  ideal  of  woman. 
Hence,  those  women  who  oppose  the  movement  by 
public  speaking  are  simply  women  who  feel  com- 
pelled, when  the  sex  is  threatened  by  what  they 
regard  not  as  a  liberation  but  as  a  danger,  to  come 
out  in  the  open  and  meet  the  enemy  on  her  own 
ground  and  beat  her  with  her  own  weapons.  And 
the  fact  that  some  women  make  capital  public  speakers 
— both  for  and  against  the  cause — no  more  proves 
that  all  women  are,  could,  and  should  be  engaged  in 
public  controversy  than  the  fact  that  some  women 
work  on  the  pit-brow  proves  that  to  be  a  desirable 
occupation  for  all  women  in  general.  When  you  hear 
of  an  Anti-sufiragist  woman  speaker  who  gets  so 
fascinated  with  her  platform  success  that  she  deserts 
her  side  to  go  over  to  the  enemy,  then  you  will  have 
something  to  talk  about.    But  that  miracle  has  not 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  107 


yet  happened.  Till  then,  therefore,  the  answer  to  the 
point  that  even  those  women  who  do  not  want  the 
vote  deserve  it  because  they  show  they  are  so  in- 
telligent, is  that  they  are  so  intelligent  that  they  do 
not  want  it.  Besides,  even  a  capacity  for  public 
speaking  is  not  the  last  test  of  the  fitness  for  a  vote. 
There  is  more  in  public  life  than  platform  oratory, 
though  the  two  things  have  become  sadly  confounded. 
And  some  of  the  most  intelligent  men,  and  even  the 
strongest  physically,  have  a  dread  of  public  speaking 
so  profound  that  it  paralyses  their  intelligence  when 
they  try  it. 

The  Obsession  of  Suffragism. 

We  now  return  to  the  high  road  after  this  divergence 
to  meet  a  debating  point.  The  fact  that  the  women 
who  oppose  the  vote  do  not  make  as  much  stir  in  the 
public  world  as  the  women  who  want  the  vote,  must 
not  blind  you  to  the  fact  that  the  women  who  do  not 
want  the  vote  are  going  about  their  work  and  doing 
what  they  conceive  to  be  woman's  duty  without  noise, 
riot,  or  notoriety  ;  whereas  with  those  who  do  want  the 
vote  it  has  become  a  preoccupation,  almost  a  sole 
occupation,  sometimes  a  profession,  and  even  an 
obsession,  precluding  any  other  form  of  activity 
whatever.  Do  you  suppose  that  many  of  the  pro- 
minent Suffragists  spend  much  time  at  home,  I  will 
not  say  performing  domestic  duties,  but  even  directing 
others  to  perform  them  ?  But  it  would  be  doing 
womanhood  a  great  injustice  to  suppose  that  only 
those  wonten  who  are  most  prominent  just  now  in  the 
public  eye  are  the  real  spokeswomen  of  their  sex. 
The  best  examples  of  womanhood  in  the  laud  (even 
if  you  say,  "  Only  from  the  old-fashioned  point  of 
view")  are  those  who  are  going  about  their  work  in 
their  own  quiet  way,  and  a  few  of  them  have  the 
courage  and  the  skill  to  emerge  to  counteract  by 
decorous  public  debate  the  noisier  but  not  the  more 
effective  work  of  the  prominent  Suffragists. 

Of  course,  the  Suffragists  have  sedulously  fostered 


108  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


the  notion  that  they  are  the  women  of  the  country. 
But  that  is  nierely  not  true.  Only  those  who  have 
mixed  in  circles  where  Suffragism  is  the  prevailing 
creed  know  how  arrogant  and  intolerant  are  Suffragists 
to  all  who  oppose  them,  whether  men  or  women.  Free 
Traders  and  Tariff  Reformers  may  meet  amicably  any- 
where (except  in  public,  where  their  amity  is  not 
required)  but  if  it  be  known  in  a  Suffragist  circle  that 
an  Anti-suffragist  is  present,  the  poor  man  or  woman 
is  fetched  out  of  the  social  sphere  and  atmosphere 
altogether,  and  put  through  his  paces  as  though  he 
were  a  candidate  on  a  platform,  waiting  and  willing  to 
be  heckled.  And  in  such  circles  Suffragism  is  often 
only  a  particular  manifestation  of  a  general  tendency. 

The  Pseudo-Intellectuals. 

For  there  is  just  now  abroad  a  certain  type  of  "  in- 
tellectualism "  that  is  opposed  to  its  natural  enemy, 
which  is  merely  intelligence.  It  reveals  itself  not  only 
in  politics,  but  in  art — not  only  in  art,  but  even  in 
feeding.  Common  sense  is,  in  these  circles,  a  very  hum- 
drum, philistinic,  bourgeois,  commonplace  sort  of  virtue 
indeed.  If  you  eat  beef,  you  are  vulgar.  A  toleration 
for  melodrama  (even  though  you  tolerate  it  only  as  you 
tolerate  the  art  of  the  pavement  artist)  puts  you 
amongst  the  "  intellectually  "  damned  You  must  talk 
the  jargon  of  art  until,  if  you  are  a  healthy-minded 
man,  you  want  to  go  outside  and  enter  the  first  low 
"  pub"  you  can  find  and  drink  a  pint  of  common  beer 
out  of  a  common  tankard.  Personally  I  don't  mind 
admiring  art  (though  I  do  not  admire  everything  done 
in  the  name  of  art)  and  I  respect  artists  (with  many 
notable  exceptions),  and  I  believe  that  it  is  a  great 
pity,  from  the  point  of  view  exclusively  of  artistic  con- 
siderations, that  the  British  public  does  not  greatly 
understand  or  esteem  art.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
am  quite  sure  that  a  nation  of  artists  would  be  a  nation 
in  decadence,  and  that  a  certain  bovine,  healthy  philis- 
tinism  is  what  keeps  the  general  mind  sound  in  the 
general  body.  And  that  is  why  the  jargon  of  art  really 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  109 


becomes  the  language  of  decadents.  Shakespeare 
didn't  go  about  talking  art,  Mr  Max  Bcerbohm's 
cartoon  no  doubt  showed  clearly  enough  Browning's 
attitude  to  the  Browning  Society,  and  Tennyson 
smoked  clay  pipes,  and  Meredith  liked  a  good  tramp 
over  the  downs.  And  all  great  creative  artists  have 
got  in  them  something  of  the  healthy  and  sane  philis- 
tinism  of  Dr  Johnson.  But  if,  in  the  circles  I  speak  of, 
you  frankly  called  "post  impressionism"  the  second 
childhood  of  art,  you  were  thought  to  live  secretly 
somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Peckham.  In  such 
circles,  also,  you  must  have  "  broad  views  "  about  mar- 
riage, but  that  is  the  mere  cant  of  "  intellectualism," 
for  if  you  carried  your  broad  views  into  practice  you 
would  be  looked  upon  as  a  more  degraded  being  than 
even  the  Bohemian  of  the  eighties,  who  was  a  healthy, 
albeit  rather  a  grubby  being.  And,  in  short,  if  you 
stand  up  for  any  orthodox  view  whatever,  you  are 
looked  upon  as  a  musty  survival  of  mid-Victorianism 
(that  deadly  epithet !)  and  are  classed  with  chandeliers, 
the  Family  Bible,  Yorkshire  pudding,  and  a  heavy 
mid-day  dinner  on  a  Sunday.  And  if  you  sincerely 
believe  that  wives  and  mothers  are,  potentially,  as 
noble  creatures  as  any  beings  created  by  the  Creator, 
you  are  regarded  as  being  hopelessly  behind  the  times 
and  as  old-fashioned  as  an  antimacassar.  No  percep- 
tion that  the  elemental  truths  are  those  that  never  go 
out  of  fashion  ever  enters  the  minds  of  the  "Intel- 
lectuals." 

The  Soil  of  Suffragism. 

It  is  in  this  soil — this  favourable  nidus  for  abnormal 
growths — that  one  phase  of  Suffragism  flourishes.  It 
is  no  more  representative  of  womanhood  than  "  the 
artistic  temperament"  is  the  prevailing  temperament 
of  the  British  working  man.  It  does  not  stand  for 
progress  so  much  as  for  decadence,  and  the  happiness 
of  woman  no  more  depends  upon  it  than  the  salvation 
of  the  human  race  depends  upon  embracing  the  artistic 
principles  of  the  Cubists.    But  nevertheless,  by  a  'cute 


no  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


alliance  between  the  principles  of  decadence  and  the 
arts  of  modern  advertisement,  a  wholly  false  idea  has 
been  given  of  the  importance  and  intellectual  quality 
of  the  movement,  and  the  arrogance  of  this  type  of 
Suffragist  towards  their  sisters  who  oppose  them  par- 
takes of  something  of  the  spirit  of  a  vendetta.  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  unfair,  and  if  that  statement  needs  some 
qualification,  it  shall  have  it.  There  are  many  women 
Suffragists  who  take  a  much  more  human  view  of  their 
creed.  They  see  in  it,  however  mistakenly,  the  re- 
generation of  their  sex,  but  do  not  perceive  that  if 
their  sex  is  to  be  born  again  it  must  be  born  again  tn 
its  own  likeness.  But  these  women  may  yet  be  won  to 
the  cause  and  side  of  their  own  sex,  which  is  not 
Suffragism.  And  the  most  arrogant  and  "  intellectual  " 
form  of  Suffragism  has  its  nest  and  home  in  another 
soil.  The  soil  is  that  in  which  overblown  flowers  run 
to  an  untimely  seed — energy  is  there,  and  some  good 
purpose,  but  it  has  overshot  itself,  outgrown  its 
strength,  and  its  roots  are  not  in  mother  earth. 
Whether  over-development  or  arrested  development 
is  the  obscure  cause,  the  result  is  that  they  have  been 
turned  into  "  sports " — not  in  the  colloquial,  but  in 
what  I  believe  is  the  botanist's  sense  of  that  word. 

"  Startling  the  Native." 

Coming  back  now  to  the  political  rather  than  the 
"  intellectual "  Suffragists,  I  do  not  think  it  can  be 
denied  that  on  the  spectacular  side  the  cause  has  made 
more  progress  than  it  has  on  the  argumentative  side. 
The  militants,  on  their  own  statement,  have  taken  to 
the  more  strenuous  form  of  propaganda  mainly  to  call 
attention  to  their  cause — to  epaier  le  bourgeois — to 
startle  the  native — rather  than  because  they  expected 
their  activities  to  appeal  to  the  intelligence.  Lady 
Selborne,  for  instance,  who  is  not  a  militant,  wrote  a 
letter  to  herself  in  another  lady's  name  (though  with- 
out her  authority)  to  point  out  what  she  thought  a 
curious  thing : 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  m 


"You  hold  a  crowded  meeting  in  the  centre  of  London,  with  an 
ex-Cabinet  Minister  as  chief  speaker,  and  you  get  a  short  para- 
graph on  a  back  sheet  in  most  of  the  papers.  Now,  if  I  threw  a 
stone  at  the  Prime  Minister's  carriage  I  should  get  a  column  on 
the  first  page,  and  perforce  people's  attention  is  directed  to  our 
cause." 

So  Lady  Selborne  wrote  to  herself,  signing  the 
letter  with  the  name  of  Lady  Constance  Lytton,  and 
she  sent  the  little  invention  to  The  Times  with  a 
letter  to  the  Editor  saying :  "  Sir,  I  have  received  the 
enclosed  letter  from  Lady  Constance  Lytton.  It  seems 
to  me  there  is  a  certain  truth  in  what  she  says,  so  I 
should  be  much  obliged  if  you  would  insert  it  in 
The  Times,  March  lo,  19 li."  We  need  not  be  hard 
on  Lady  Selborne.  The  innocent  fraud  reveals  a 
curious  notion  on  the  part  of  women  of  what  is  the 
regulation  way  of  conducting  a  public  controversy,  but 
as  Lady  Constance  Lytton  afterwards  endorsed  the 
sentiments  attributed  to  her  by  Lady  Selborne,  no 
particular  harm  was  done,  and  no  doubt  Lady  Selborne 
learned  a  salutary  lesson  by  the  exposure  of  what  was, 
though  a  thoughtless,  not  really  a  deceitful  act.  But 
she  was  annoyed  that  her  husband,  the  Cabinet 
Minister  referred  to,  should  speak  of  Woman  Suffrage 
and  get  no  attention  from  the  Press,  whilst  if  a  militant 
threw  a  brick  at  the  Prime  Minister's  carriage  she 
would  get  a  column  of  notoriety.  Hence  Lady  Sel- 
borne (addressing  herself  in  the  name  of  another  lady) 
felt  that  the  militant  method  was  the  better  of  the 
two. 

Well,  the  phenomenon  of  an  ex-Cabinet  Minister 
addressing  a  public  meeting  is,  in  itself,  not  very 
remarkable ;  but  it  is  not  every  day,  fortunately,  that 
stones  are  thrown  at  a  Prime  Minister's  carriage, 
though  the  newspapers  have  already  discovered  that 
that  sort  of  thing  has  lost  a  good  deal  of  its  news  value 
(for  the  bourgeois  soon  gets  tired  of  a  joke  after  being 
once  epate).  But  Lady  Selborne's  fallacy  is  in  sup- 
posing that  "  the  cause "  is  advanced  by  such  antics. 
A  tradesman  standing  on  his  head  outside  his  shop 
would  no  doubt  attract  "  people's  attention,"  but  they 


112  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


might  be  more  entertained  by  his  eccentricity  than 
induced  to  go  inside  his  shop  and  buy  his  wares.  And 
the  miHtant  Suffragettes  have  really  insulted  the 
intelligence  of  democracy  by  supposing  that  their 
cause  gained  by  the  mere  inanity  of  their  public 
misbehaviour. 

Exploiting  the  Multitude. 

Yet  there  is  some  truth  in  the  words  Lady  Selborne 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Lady  Constance  Lytton,  and 
so  far  as  they  are  true  th^y  ought  to  stimulate  every 
man  and  woman  in  the  islands  to  prove  them  false  in 
the  long  run.  Unfortunately  it  is  true  that  the  arts 
of  irrelevant  advertisement  are  those  which  impose 
upon  the  multitude,  though  only  up  to  a  certain  point. 
And  the  greatest  danger  to  which  the  democracy  is 
exposed  is  that  it  may  be  exploited  by  clever  advertise- 
ment. The  pitiable  shifts  and  devices  to  which  parlia- 
mentary candidates  have  to  abandon  themselves  to 
secure  votes — even  from  men — do  show  that  demo- 
cracy is  a  little  too  ready  to  make  itself  the  prey  of  the 
arts  of  the  showman  as  against  the  sincerity  and  truth 
of  the  man  who  appeals  merely  to  their  intelligence. 
In  a  London  paper  the  other  day  was  the  news  of  the 
appointment  of  a  certain  lawyer  to  a  judgeship  of  a 
criminal  court,  and  the  paper  concluded  its  notice  of 
the  appointment  and  its  brief  biography  of  the  new 
judge  with  the  words  : 

"  He  has  a  keen  sense  of  humour,  a  fund  of  good  stories,  and 
a  knack  of  ready  repartee  —  gifts  which  should  go  far  to  brighten 
the  courts  over  which  he  presides." 

Now,  you  will  ask,  "  What  on  earth  has  that  to  do 
with  Votes  for  Women  ? "  It  has  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  your  attitude  towards  the  spectacular  campaign 
of  the  Suffragists.  It  has,  in  fact,  just  as  much  to  do 
with  that  as  a  fund  of  good  stories  has  not  to  do  with 
a  good  judge.  Now,  why  were  the  readers  of  a  news- 
paper— a  newspaper,  moreover,  that  does  its  best  to 
enlighten  democracy  in  other  ways — told  that  a  judge 
who  had  the  liberties  of  men  and  women  in  his  hands, 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  ii3 


numbers  among  his  qualifications  such  incongruous 
virtues  as  that  he  has  a  fund  of  good  stories  and  a 
knack  of  ready  repartee  ?  The  answer  is  that  the 
intelligence  of  democracy  is  sometimes  insulted  even 
by  its  friends.  They  assume  that  it  does  not  think, 
and  that  it  is  readier  to  laugh  than  to  reflect,  and  that 
all  that  is  necessary  to  commend  a  new  judge  to  the 
man  in  the  street  is  to  say  that  he  promises  to  make 
his  criminal  court  a  gay  and  lively  place  and  to  pro- 
vide piquant  paragraphs  in  the  newspapers. 

Now,  precisely  the  same  really  contemptuous  atti- 
tude to  the  public  that  is  shown  in  that  fatuous  com- 
mendation of  a  new  judge — a  commendation  that 
mentions  every  virtue  except  those  that  we  look  for 
in  a  judge,  and  that  no  doubt  did  the  judge  himself 
an  injustice — is  shown  by  the  picturesque,  spectacular, 
and  wholly  irrelevant  part  of  the  Suffragists'  militant 
campaign.  Their  martyrdoms  and  disturbances  were 
really  meant  to  take  your  mind  off  the  question  rather 
than  to  concentrate  it  on  the  question  ;  that  question 
being  whether  it  is  a  good  or  a  bad  thing  that  women 
should  be  plunged,  as  a  sex,  into  the  welter  of  politics 
and  economic  rivalry  with  man.  That  was  the  purpose. 
But  whether  they  had  that  effect  depends  entirely 
upon  how  far  people  are  able  to  distinguish  the  real 
from  the  false,  the  relevant  thing  from  the  irrele- 
vant thing,  and  the  sensible  thing  from  the  senseless. 

Sense  and  Sincerity. 

But  it  may  be  said.  If  women  will  do  such  extra- 
ordinary and  unwomanly  things  as  to  fasten  themselves 
to  a  pillar  in  a  place  of  worship,  and  howl  at  a  Prime 
Minister  who  has  attended  to  deliver  an  address  far 
removed  from  politics,  they  must  indeed  be  suffering 
under  a  very  strong  sense  of  the  injustice  of  being 
kept  without  votes.  Well,  even  that  assumption  is 
going  too  far,  for  the  psychological  motives  of  con- 
duct are  very  obscure,  and  people  will  do  strange 
things.  But  it  is  not  surprising  that  women  who 
deride  everything  that  other  women  think  "womanly" 


114  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


should  do  and  say  those  things  which  are  thought  and 
called  unwomanly.  But  the  point  is  not  whether  they 
are  earnest  or  sincere  or  not.  We  should  have  believed 
in  their  earnestness  and  sincerity  no  less,  but  a  good 
deal  more,  if  they  had  behaved,  not  irrationally,  but 
with  the  force  of  reason  merely.  And  their  earnest- 
ness and  sincerity  are  equalled  by  those  women  who 
do  not  find  it  necessary  to  be  gagged  and  get  arrested 
in  order  to  prove  these  qualities,  and  who  have  re- 
frained from  assaulting  even  those  prominent  politicians 
who  are  prepared  to  do  the  thing  they  abhor — give 
votes  to  women.  Besides,  the  militants  have  not  only 
annoyed  Mr  Asquith,  who  is  against  them,  but  Mr 
Lloyd  George  and  Sir  Edward  Grey,  who  are  in  favour 
of  their  cause.  Mr  Lloyd  George  apparently  likes  it, 
but  Sir  Edward  Grey,  taking  a  more  normal  view  of 
things,  has  announced  that  if  the  annoyance  and  mis- 
behaviour to  his  friends  the  Prime  Minister  and  others 
does  not  cease,  he  is  not  going  to  waste  his  time  and 
breath  over  commending  a  cause  so  hopelessly  damned 
in  the  eyes  of  the  nation.  Nevertheless  he  has  begun 
to  commend  the  cause. 

And  the  point  to  condemn  about  militancy  is  that 
it  seeks  to  achieve  by  annoyance  what  it  does  not 
secure  by  argument,  and  it  will  not  do  to  give  en- 
couragement to  any  cause — even  if  it  were  deserving 
and  unanswerable — to  try  to  seek  its  triumph  by 
disorderliness  and  misdemeanours.  Tariff  Reform  has 
been  a  cause  for  nearly  a  decade,  but  Tariff  Reformers 
do  not  waylay  Free  Traders,  and  either  of  those  creeds 
is  upheld  by  an  immeasurably  greater  number  ot 
people  than  assent  even  to  the  bare  principle  of 
Woman  Suffrage.  But  we  could  not  afford  to  allow 
militancy  to  triumph  and  set  the  example  of  a  tyranny 
of  insubordination,  or  each  sect  in  the  State  would 
make  itself  a  power  by  the  sheer  force  of  becoming 
a  nuisance,  and  Christian  "  Scientists  "  might  enforce 
a  clamour  for  State  endowment  by  a  policy  of  passive 
resistance  and  the  resources  of  a  voluntary  martyrdom. 

The  fact,  then,  that  Suffragism  has  been  supported 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  us 


by  the  vehemence  and  disorderliness  of  a  few  women 
is  no  commendation  whatever  of  the  vote  being  granted 
as  an  act  of  grace.  Their  earnestness  is  counter- 
balanced by  the  orderly  earnestness  of  women  who 
do  7iot  want  woman  to  be  enfranchised.  And  if  we 
leave  emotion  on  one  side,  and  come  to  numerical 
strength,  the  claim  is  no  more  valid.  Even  the  most 
implacable  opponent  of  the  cause  would  be  content  to 
abide  by  the  result  of  a  referendum  of  the  question 
to  the  mass  of  existing  voters,  and  would  sorrowfully 
capitulate  before  the  evidence  that  the  vote  was 
desired  by  an  overwhelming  majority  of  the  women 
themselves.  But  that  submission  of  the  issue  to  a 
democratic  decision  is  not  what  the  Suffragists  want. 
With  a  blind  impetuosity  that  has  no  parallel  in 
politics,  they  simply  wish  to  rush  the  position  through 
what  is  now  an  omnipotent  House  of  Commons,  and 
before  the  opposition  to  the  revolution  can  be  con- 
solidated. 

A  Little  Referendum. 

The  Anti-suffragists,  on  the  other  hand,  ardently 
desire  to  place  their  opposition  at  the  mercy  of  the 
real  will  of  the  nation,  or  even  of  the  wish  of  the 
women  themselves.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  nothing 
Quixotic  in  this  desire,  for  they  know  quite  well 
that  the  mass  of  opinion  in  the  country  is  with  them, 
and  that  makes  it  all  the  more  bewildering  that  we 
should  have  a  Parliament,  many  of  whose  members 
talk  quite  glibly  about  Woman  Suffrage  becoming  law 
during  this  session,  a  complacent  prophecy  that  ap- 
parently assumes  the  House  of  Lords  to  be  eager  to 
abrogate  even  its  suspensory  veto.  And  the  organised 
Anti-suffragists  have  done  their  best  to  secure  an  in- 
dication of  what  the  women  of  the  country  think  by 
sending  out  at  great  trouble  and  expense  many 
thousands  of  postcards  asking  a  plain  "Yes"  to  one 
or  other  of  the  simple  questions,  "Do  you  think 
women  should  have  the  parliamentary  vote  ? "  and 
"  Do  you  think  women  should  not  have  the  parlia- 


ii6  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


mentary  vote  ? "  The  results  of  this  canvass,  con- 
ducted among  the  women  voters  on  the  municipal 
register  of  103  districts,  proves  absolutely  (1)  That 
more  than  twice  as  many  women  are  opposed  to  the 
vote  as  arc  in  favour  of  it ;  (2)  that  many  more  women 
are  neutral  or  are  indifferent  to  it  than  are  even 
against  it.  For  out  of  135,481  women  municipal  voters 
asked  to  vote,  57,112  disdained  even  to  reply.  The 
assumption  must  be  made  that  these  57,112  arc,  at 
any  rate,  not  Suffragists,  for  if  a  woman  wanted  a 
vote  she  would  at  least  go  to  the  trouble  of  saying 
she  did  when  asked.  But  the  majority  of  the  57,112 
are  probably  women  who  have  such  little  patience, 
sympathy,  or  interest  in  the  claim,  and  who  regard 
the  danger  of  the  suffrage  as  so  remote  from  pro- 
bability, that  they  merely  put  the  postcard  in  the  fire' 
And  though  only  21,725  women  municipal  electors 
were  in  favour  of  Woman  Suffrage,  47,286  were 
against  it,  to  say  nothing  of  9,358  who  were  neutral, 
and  who  therefore  at  any  rate  did  not  want  the  vote, 
and  to  say  nothing  of  the  57,112  women  who  did  not 
bother  about  the  matter  at  all. 

Now,  these  figures  reveal  that  less  than  one  woman 
in  six  is  in  favour  of  Woman  Suffrage — roughly  two 
in  thirteen.  And  it  is  a  very  curious  and  instructive 
thing  that  that  figure  holds  good  in  two  other  refer- 
enda that  have  been  taken.  The  first  was  conducted 
by  Colonel  Seely,  M.P.,  among  the  adult  women  of  his 
constituency  of  Ilkeston,  and  the  second  was  conducted 
by  the  Scottish  National  Anti-Suffrage  League.  It  is 
v/orth  while  setting  out  these  figures,  together  with 
those  resulting  from  the  referendum  taken  by  the 
English  League  for  opposing  Woman  Suffrage,  for  they 
constitute  a  Referendum  in  miniature,  and  answer 
overwhelmingly,  both  by  the  indication  of  direct  op- 
position and  of  positive  indifference  to  the  Suffrage 
claim,  any  contention  that  the  Suffragists  may  have  the 
hardihood  to  make  of  the  extent  to  which  their 
"  demand  "  for  the  franchise  has  any  response  from  the 
sex. 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  117 


Voters 

Votes 
Recorded 
For  or 
Against 

For 

Against 

No 
Reply 

Ilkeston 

Scottish  League 
English  League 

6,600 
66,055 
135,481 

2,855 
29,740 
69,011 

1074 
10,740 
21,725 

1811 

19,000 
47,286 

3,745 
34,261 
57,112 

Neutral 


Numbers  Ignored. 

If,  then,  we  measure  the  claim  for  a  vote  by  the 
intensity  or  by  the  numerical  strength  of  the  opposi- 
tion to  it,  we  are  forced  to  set  out  on  our  enquiry  as  to 
the  expediency  of  granting  the  vote  as  an  act  of  grace, 
hampered  (or  relieved)  by  the  knowledge  that,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  women  of  Britain  do  not  want,  so 
far  as  any  evidence  goes,  to  have  the  vote  at  all.  And 
this  fact  is  recognised  even  by  the  Suffragists,  for  we 
have  representative  spokeswomen  among  them  deny- 
ing that  the  vote  depends  either  upon  whether  the 
existing  male  voters  will  give  it  or  not  or  upon  whether 
the  majority  of  women  want  it  or  not.  From  which 
we  are  to  conclude  that  they  are,  in  their  own  estima- 
tion, of  such  transcendent  importance  that  they  are  the 
only  people  in  the  State  whose  opinion  upon  a  very 
grave  matter  of  State  is  to  be  consulted.  To  show  that 
I  do  them  no  injustice  in  thus  stating  their  attitude,  I 
will  quote  a  passage  from  a  letter  written  {Daily 
Chronicle,  September  191 1)  by  an  official  of  the 
National  Union  of  Woman  Suffrage  Societies,  in 
answer  to  the  voting  taken  by  the  opponents  : 

"The  leaders  of  a  movement  which  can  bring  40,000  women 
together  from  every  part  of  the  country,  and  which  is  being 
carried  on  with  equal  enthusiasm  all  the  world  over,  will  scarcely 
set  much  value  on  the  actual  numerical  value  or  the  actual 
numerical  figures  of  those  who  are  for  or  against." 

If  numerical  strength  is  to  be  ignored,  why  on  earth 
does  she  wish  to  impress  us  by  the  mention  of  the 
figure  of  40,000  ?    And  she  goes  on  : 

"  They  know  that  even  if  the  proportion  were  ten  to  one  against 
them,  the  intensity  of  desire  in  the  smaller  number  would  be  so 
much  greater  than  in  the  larger  that  mere  numbers  would  be  a 
minor  consideration." 


ii8  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Well,  it  is  impossible  to  argue  or  even  to  be  on 
speaking  terms  with  such  a  point  of  view  as  that.  You 
meet  it,  you  shake  your  head,  and  mutter  to  yourself 
a  pious  sympathy,  but  you  know  the  case  of  such  a 
point  of  view  is  hopeless,  and  you  pass  on.  1 

The  Women  Who  DON'T. 

Now,  there  is  not  only  a  practical  and  determining 
significance  in  this  outstanding  and  unchallengeable 
fact  that  the  women  of  England,  considered  in  the 
mass,  do  not  zvant  the  vote.  There  is  a  moral  signifi- 
cance even  greater,  and  even  as  fatal  to  the  hope.  For 
you  cannot  enfranchise  a  whole  sex  against  the  wish  of 
the  vast  majority  of  the  sex.  Indeed,  the  word  "  en- 
franchisement "  becomes  nonsense  if  the  majority  of  the 
sex  consider  not  that  you  are  going  to  liberate  them, 
but  are  doing  your  best  to  fetter  them  with  a  responsi- 
bility they  cannot  discharge  and  to  burden  them  with  a 
duty  which  is  repugnant  to  them.  And  that  is  the 
position — in  itself  a  proof  that  the  movement  is  arti- 
ficial, factitious,  and  has  no  roots  in  the  needs  of  their 
sex.  Clearly,  then,  to  give  the  vote  as  an  act  of  grace 
means  also  imposing  the  vote  as  a  distasteful  burden. 

But  it  is  the  curious  nature  of  this  agitation  that  it 
produces  the  strangest  twists  and  turns  of  logic — when 
you  have  vanquished  one  point  as  an  argument  it 

'  No  doubt  by  the  time  these  words  are  in  print  the  logical 
conclusion  of  this  unreason  will  have  been  reached.  For  the  move- 
ment now  begun  in  favour  of  a  Referendum  will  have  its  effect  upon 
a  Parliamentary  majority  that  will  be  prepared  to  grasp  that  escape 
from  the  dilemma  created  by  its  own  complacence.  But  the 
Suffragists,  seeing  that  the  parliamentary  game  is  against  them, 
and  confronted  with  the  fact  that  a  Referendum  would  reveal  the 
fact  that  so  far  from  the  nation  wanting  the  suffrage,  only  a  few 
voluntary  societies  want  it,  will  then  boldly  come  out  to  say  that 
they  want  it  irrespective  of  anybody  else's  wishes  altogether,  and 
irrespective  also  of  the  wills  of  the  nation,  whether  expressed 
by  the  House  of  Commons,  acting  without  a  mandate,  or  by  the 
House  of  Commons  acting  through  a  mandate  obtained  either  by 
a  general  election  or  a  referendum.  We  shall  then  see  exactly 
where  we  are,  and  that  the  movement  constitutes  a  phase  of 
irrationality  that  must  be  allowed  to  run  its  course  and  pass 
away. 


THE  TWO  KINDS  OF  WOMEN  ii9 


comes  to  life  again  as  an  absurdity.  And  so,  although 
it  be  admitted  that  more  women  hate  the  idea  of  being 
burdened  with  a  vote  than  have  an  "  intense  desire  " 
for  it,  supporters  still  say,  "  Well,  why  not  let  the 
women  who  want  it  have  it,  and  those  who  do  not 
want  it  can  go  without  it  ?  "  Well,  a  vote  is  not  a  toy. 
It  is  not  something  given  to  play  with — to  be  used 
until  it  no  longer  interests  or  to  be  put  away  in  a 
drawer  and  not  used  at  all.  A  vote  is  an  instrument  of 
power,  and  so  a  vote  is  a  thing  which  concerns  other 
people  besides  those  who  do  not  particularly  wish  to 
exercise  their  own  vote.  So  it  is  no  use  to  say,  "  Let 
the  women  who  do  not  want  it  yet  wait  and  be  edu- 
cated up  to  it !  "  For  the  simple  fact  is  that  they  don't 
want  it  because  they  are  already  educated  beyoiid  it. 
And  if  we  are  to  consider  women  at  all,  we  must 
consider  one  portif)n  as  much  as  another,  and  not 
ignore  it  because  it  happens  to  be  the  more  numerous 
and  the  better  behaved  of  the  two. 

For  the  women  who  do  not  want  the  vote  object 
to  being  governed  by  other  women — and  that  is  not 
sufficiently  appreciated  as  their  point  of  view.  They 
recognise  that  if  other  women  had  the  vote,  they  them- 
selves would  have  to  take  up  the  same  weapon,  and 
shoulder  a  burden  they  do  not  want,  in  order  to 
take  care  that  their  type  and  ideal  of  woman  could 
prevail  against  a  type  and  an  ideal  with  which  they 
have  no  sympathy. 

And  this  brings  us  to  another  consideration  con- 
cerning giving  the  vote  to  women  as  an  act  of  grace, 
and  that  is,  the  opinion  that  men  and  women  have  of 
each  other  and  of  themselves. 


CHAPTER  X. 


Sex  And  Politics. 

SEX  DIFFERENCES  —  THE  THEORY  OF  SEX  TYRANNY 
—  "  POWER  "  AND  POWER  —  "  THE  IMMORALITY  OF 
AUTHORITY  "  —  WOMEN'S   OPINION    OF  WOMEN. 


I 


1 


CHAPTER  X. 


Sex  and  Politics. 

It  has  now  become  a  commonplace  of  the  Suffragist 
case  that  "  men  have  a  contempt  for  women,"  and 
regard  them  as  "  inferior  creatures."  Every  man  must 
answer  that  charge  for  himself.  My  own  answer  is 
given  in  the  dedication  of  this  book,  and  I  imagine  that 
most  men  alive  can  refer  their  respect  for  women  to 
the  same  source. 

But  when  the  taunt  is  made  to  you  it  is  as  well 
to  answer  it  gently.  For  I  have  found  that  the 
first  ray  of  light  that  could  be  made  to  penetrate  the 
Suffragist  mind  concerning  men's  attitude  to  Woman 
Suffrage,  proceeds  from  the  illumination  that  a  man 
might  oppose  the  political  enfranchisement  of  women 
not  because  he  thought  they  were  inferior  creatures, 
but  from  the  motive  that  he  dreaded  that  their  last 
state  might  be  worse  than  the  first.  I  am  firmly 
convinced  that  the  starting  point  in  the  minds  of 
many  Suffragists  has  been  this  moral  heresy  concerning 
man's  opinion  of  women.  In  that  war  of  the  sexes 
that  must,  perhaps,  be  eternally  waged  at  the  bidding 
of  an  instinct,  men  do  many  injustices  to  women. 
Those  injustices  can  never  be  remedied,  it  may  be, 
so  long  as  the  race  does  not  become  effete — the 
spiritual  carnage  of  broken  hearts  through  broken 
faith  is  inherent  in  the  struggle  of  sex,  and  when 
it  ceases  the  end  of  the  race  must  be  in  sight.  For 
it  can  only  come  when  the  sexes  have  lost  their 
curiosity  about  each  other,  and  nothing  would  assist 
that  calamity  more  than  that  the  sexes  should  be 
so  modified  and  approximated  as  to  weaken  the 
force  of  sexual  attraction.  But  even  men  who  sin 
agaias*  women  do  not  lose  their  respect  for  women, 

'23 


124  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


unless  they  belong  to  that  worthless  class  of  men 
whom  men  do  not  respect.  Many  a  man  makes  a 
shrine  of  that  altar  upon  which  a  woman  has  given 
herself  in  sacrifice  to  him. 

Sex  Differences. 

But  all  this  modern  talk  of  sex  antagonism,  it  is 
curious  to  note,  comes  not  from  men  but  from  women  ; 
and  exclusively  from  those  women  who  accuse  men 
of  regarding  woman  as  an  inferior  being.  And  nothing 
is  more  irrelevant  to  the  discussion  of  this  question 
than  whether  man  or  woman  be  the  superior  being. 
The  only  point  at  which  the  two  questions  touch  is 
at  the  point  whether  woman,  in  her  relation  to  the 
State,  occupies  the  same  position  as  man,  considered 
as  a  factor  in  the  State.  It  is  true  that  that^point, 
which  turns  upon  the  physical  superiority  of  man, 
carries  the  consequences  very  far  ;  but  it  really  does 
not  involve  such  a  general  contrast  as  Which  is  the 
higher  being,  man  or  woman  ?  They  are  not  compar- 
able to  that  extent,  nor  is  there  any  profit  in  tr}  ing 
to  establish  such  a  far-reaching  comparison.  There 
are  similarities,  but  there  are  dissimilarities,  and 
the  only  point  in  making  any  contrast  at  all  is  to 
help  us  to  decide  whether  woman  is  sufficiently 
different  from  man  as  to  make  it  undesirable  to  thrust 
upon  her  the  same  place  in  the  State  and  life  that 
man  occupies,  or  is  sufficiently  like  man  to  make 
her  function  towards  the  State  and  the  outside  world 
exactly  the  same  as  his. 

Now,  the  task  of  deciding  between  these  two 
alternatives  is  fortunately  made  easier  by  the  extreme 
view  taken  by  the  most  representative  Suffragists. 
The  most  penetrating  and  philosophical  mind  would 
shrink  from  the  task  of  adequately  explaining,  to  the 
last  shade  of  moral  and  mental  difference,  wherein 
man  and  woman  differ.  But  happily  we  are  saved 
from  entering  upon  a  discussion  which  would  land 
us  into  a  labyrinth  like  that  of  the  Bangorian  con- 
troversy, which   found   men  still  contending  when 


SEX  AND  POLITICS  125 


the  original  point  of  Bishop  Hoadley's  controversy 
was  forgotten  and  most  of  the  original  disputants 
had  passed  away.  For  it  is  almost  of  the  essence 
of  the  position  of  the  Suffragists  that  there  is  practic- 
ally no  difference  in  man  and  woman  beyond  the 
physical  fact  of  sex.  Indeed,  it  has  been  called  by 
them  the  "  accident "  of  sex  and  "  the  mere  fact " 
of  sex.  And  to  say  that  but  for  the  accident  of 
sex  a  woman  would  be  a  man  is  like  saying  that 
but  for  the  accident  of  death  a  dead  man  would  be 
alive.  And  a  lot  of  trouble  is  saved  by  taking  the 
Suffragists  on  their  own  extreme  ground,  for  it 
simplifies  and  narrows  the  discussion. 

But  for  present  purposes  it  is  only  necessary  to 
say  that  we  must  take  the  difference  between  the 
sexes  as  self-evident.  The  physical  difference  has 
been  discussed  in  an  earlier  chapter,  and  we  have 
seen  how  far  it  takes  us  ;  that  it  has  shown  woman 
to  be  inessential  to  the  State,  however  fitted  or  unfitted 
she  may  be  for  the  home.  But  that  thread  of  sex- 
difference  will  have  to  be  dropped  now,  and  perhaps 
picked  up  again  later,  for  now  we  are  concerned  with 
what  Suffragists  really  mean  when  they  say  that 
man  looks  upon  woman  as  an  inferior  being. 

The  Theory  of  Sex  Tyranny, 

The  pithiest  and  truest  answer  to  that  charge  is 
that  the  foolish  and  benighted  men  who  have  a  low 
opinion  of  women  can  be  matched  in  folly  and 
beaten  in  numbers  and  influence  by  those  benighted 
women  who  have  a  poor  opinion  of  men  ;  and  for  a 
moment  we  will  merely  let  one  sex  cancel  the  other 
so  far  as  that  exchange  of  compliments  is  concerned. 
But  the  implication  of  the  charge  is  that  as  men 
think  women  inferior,  they  treat  them  accordingly — 
that  is,  tyrannically,  taking  advantage  of  their 
"  unprotected "  political  condition  to  pass  laws 
concerning  them  which  press  hardly  upon  them. 
This  charge  is  one  which  is  of  too  specific  a  nature 
to  succeed,  because  it  can  be  specifically  examined 


126  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


and  refuted,  and  it  will  not  be  waste  of  time  to  devote 
an  entire  chapter  to  refuting  it.  In  this  place,  how- 
ever, taking  it  as  a  refutable  charge,  we  shall  merely 
stop  to  consider  what  is  implied  by  this  charge  of 
man's  unfairness  to  women.  The  charge  overshoots 
itself  by  the  terms  in  which  it  is  made,  for  it  is  often 
stated  in  terms  which  imply  that  it  is  a  natural  and 
inevitable  thing  for  one  sex  to  be  unfair  to  the  other, 
seeing  that  neither  sex  understands  the  other  nor 
is  in  complete  sympathy  with  it.  But  if  that  were 
true,  women  would  be  equally  unfair  to  men  if  they 
obtained  political  power,  and  as  they  would  be,  as 
a  sex,  in  a  majority  over  men,  we  are  being  asked 
to  transpose  the  positions,  with  our  eyes  open,  and 
make  ourselves  the  downtrodden  sex  by  enthroning 
another  sex  over  us.  And,  I  need  hardly  say,  we 
are  not  likely  to  do  that.  Men  would,  of  course, 
have  their  ultimate  weapon  for  their  hands  if  this 
sex  tyranny  were  carried  to  the  unendurable  point  ; 
and  that  consideration,  coming  at  this  juncture  again, 
serves  afresh  to  show  how  grotesque  would  be  the 
situation  which  gave  power  to  one  sex  to  tyrannise 
over  the  other  by  parliamentary  enactment  when  that 
other  sex  would  have  it  in  its  power  to  sweep  away  the 
parliamentary  enactments,  and  even  the  Parliament 
that  gave  them  birth,  by  ignoring  both  in  a  simple 
act  of  revolution. 

And  though  that  danger,  of  deliberate  sex  tyranny 
by  women,  would  be  remote,  it  is  just  as  well  to 
consider  a  very  real  danger  which,  whilst  falling 
short  in  degree  of  anything  that  could  be  called 
tyranny,  might  carry  us  very  near  to  the  point  when 
legislative  and  administrative  measures,  carried  by 
women's  votes,  would  be  repudiated  by  the  men 
outvoted.  That  danger  is  this  :  It  is  becoming  more 
■and  more  the  tendency  in  parliamentary  legislation  to 
sail  very  near  to  the  wind  of  antagonising  the  big 
electoral  minority  by  the  use  of  the  power  of  the 
big  parliamentary  majority.  Both  parties  in  the  State 
are  guilty  in  turn  of  succumbing  to  this  temptation 


SEX  AND  POLITICS  127 


to  make  their  party  hay  while  the  sun  of  their  majority 
shines.  The  Conservatives  succumbed  over  the 
licensing  and  educational  legislation  ;  the  Liberals 
by  their  financial  legislation,  and  even  in  the  con- 
stitutional issue,  have  done  the  same.  Each  party 
legislates  almost  up  to  the  line  when  the  minority 
is  ready  to  rebel,  leaving  a  small  margin  between 
acquiescence  and  revolt.  And  so  we  move  forwards 
by  violent  oscillations  of  the  pendulum,  and  the 
national  spirit  of  compromise  is  perhaps  failing  of 
its  charm.  But,  as  things  are,  with  male  voters  only, 
even  a  very  big  minority  respects  the  bigger  majority. 
It  grumbles,  growls  and  threatens,  and  saves  up  its 
scores,  and  hopes  some  day  to  pay  the  enemy  back  in 
its  own  coin  :  but  all  the  time  each  party  sails  near 
the  wind  of  exasperating  and  outraging  a  portion 
of  the  nation  less  by  only  a  few  hundred  thousands 
than  its  own  supporters,  even  though  among  its 
own  supporters  it  may  include  many  who  give  a 
very  doubting  assent  to  what  is  done  by  their 
party. 

"Power"  And  Power. 

But  let  us  imagine  a  Parliament  returned  by  the 
votes  of  women  as  well  as  men ;  let  us  further 
imagine,  or  realise,  that  the  votes  of  women  would  be  in 
a  majority.  Then  let  us  consider  the  almost  certain 
contingency  that  some  highly  controversial  measure 
(and  Heaven  knows  what  acute  controversies  our 
national  politics  might  not  develop  with  a  female 
electorate)  were  passed  solely  because  the  votes  of 
women,  allied  with  those  of  a  few  men,  turned  the 
scale.  Can  one  imagine  that  laws  so  passed,  forced 
upon  men  to  their  repugnance  by  women  ;  scrambling 
through  Parliament  only  by  virtue  of  the  female 
franchise,  would  command  the  respect  that  it  is 
desirable  even  obnoxious  laws  should  command  ? 
To  ask  the  question  is  to  answer  it,  and  there  would 
be  no  stability  in  a  State  in  which  the  distribution 
of  parliamentary  power  did  not  correspond  with  the 


128  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


distribution  of  that  final  and  effective  power  in  earthly 
matters,  the  wills  and  strength  of  men. 

And  this  possibility  would  be  reached  not  by  the 
conscious  and  deliberate  "  tyranny  "  of  women  over 
men  (which  we  might  reasonably  expect  according 
to  the  Suffragist  theory  of  natural  sex  antagonism),  but 
it  would  be  reached  by  the  easily  conceivable,  and 
extremely  probable  alliance  of  the  votes  of  women 
with  the  votes  of  a  section  of  men.  I  do  not  know 
or  care  whether  women  would  be  conservative  or 
revolutionary  in  political  power.  No  one  can  say, 
because  we  have  no  experience  of  woman's  behaviour 
in  the  political  sphere  of  a  modern  democracy. 
Domestically,  they  are  generally  cautious  and  con- 
servative— politically,  they  might  be  mad-cap  revolu- 
tionaries, sentimental  visionaries,  or  the  most  mulish 
Tories  ;  or  they  might  be  none  of  these  things,  but 
might  impart  quite  a  new  and  startling  standard  to 
political  thought  and  action.  But  the  point  is  that, 
even  if  we  do  reject  the  Suffragist's  theory  of  sex 
antagonism,  women  would  hold  a  parliamentary  power 
which  had  no  equipoise  in  their  real  and  effective 
power,  and  so  might  act  irresponsibly.  And  so  men 
would  in  fact  be,-  however  praiseworthy  the  motives 
of  the  women  who  helped  to  outvote  them,  the  "  slaves  " 
of  women — up  to  the  point  when  the  votes  of  women 
no  longer  counted.  And  so  it  is  not  necessary  to 
accept  the  sex  antagonism  theory  in  order  to  prove 
that  the  danger  would  be  real  if  women  had  political 
power,  though  the  danger  is  imaginary  while  men  only 
have  political  power. 

The  full  proof  that  it  is  imaginary  waits  for  a  later 
chapter,  when  we  come  to  consider  the  legal  position 
of  woman.  But  meanwhile  we  may  ask,  How  many 
women  believe  it?  How  many  women  believe  that 
man  uses  his  political  power  as  a  tyrant?  The 
Suffragists  think  so,  of  course,  but  they  are  in  a 
hopeless  minority ;  and  if  the  tyranny  were  obvious, 
would  not  all  women  be  conscious  of  it?  The  fact 
that  they  are  not,  the  fact  that  more  women  do  not 


SEX  AND  POLITICS  129 


seem  to  care  a  straw  whether  their  sex  is  enfranchised 
than  there  are  even  women  who  do  not  want  their  sex 
to  be  enfranchised  at  all,  proves  to  any  reasonable 
mind  that  the  talk  of  man's  political  tyranny  politically 
exercised  over  woman  must  be  judged  merely  as  so 
much  empty  rhetoric.  It  sounds  plausible,  and  what 
might  happen,  but  the  truth  is  that  it  doesn't. 

"The  Immorality  of  Authority." 

Here,  perhaps,  we  must  step  aside  to  meet  a  certain 
amiable  theory.     There  are  people  whose  political 
theories  are  abstractions,  having  no  relation  to  life, 
who  assert  that  it  is  bad  even  for  one  sex  to  be 
placed  in  a  superior  political  position  over  the  other, 
and  that  men  would  gain  in  moral  stature  by  ad- 
mitting the  other  sex  to  an  equality — an  equality, 
by  the  way,  that  would  actually  be  a  superiority. 
Mill  urges  this  point  very  eloquently,  but  it  has  no 
point  until  men  are  proved,  to  their  own  admission,  to 
be  unjust  to  women  ;  for  if  a  man  does  not  believe 
he  is  committing  an  injustice,  it  is  useless  to  tell  him 
he  will  feel  nobler  when  the  injustice  ceases.  But 
there  is  really  no  necessity  to  meet  this  argument. 
For  the  argument  is  really  anarchistic.    It  implies 
that  control,  authority,  and  governance  are  immoral 
things,  automatically  converting  the  controllers  and 
the  governors  into  tyrants  and  the  controlled  into 
slaves  and  the  downtrodden.    Now,  that  theory  is 
nonsense.    It  is  part  of  the  greater  nonsense  which 
just  now  is  substituting  revolt  as  a  superior  moral 
quality  to  discipline — which  is  beginning  almost  to 
regard  revolt  as  an  end  in  itself,  in  itself  good,  and 
not  a  desperate  attempted  remedy.    But  the  notion 
that  in  this  world  authority  is  an  immoral  force  needs 
to  be  combated,  as  it  very  easily  can  be.    In  this  life 
all  of  us  have  to  bow  to  some  superior  force  or  other, 
from  a  mere  creditor  to  Death  itself.    A  few  months 
ago  the  very  schoolboys  of  England,  catching  the 
infection  of  revolt  from  their  elders,  went  out  on 
strike.    But  we  had  no  difficulty  there  in  satisfying 


130  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


ourselves  of  whether  authority  was  immoral  or  not. 
We  had  no  difficulty  in  deciding  that  as  between 
schoolboys  on  strike  and  parents  and  teachers  who 
did  not  sympathise  with  the  object  of  the  strike,  it 
was  the  might  of  parents  and  teachers  that  must 
prevail,  and  abstract  "  rights "  must  take  care  of 
themselves.  Parents  and  teachers  simply  assumed, 
in  the  most  brutal  fashion,  that  they  knew  better 
than  the  schoolboys  what  was  good  for  them,  and 
back  to  school  they  went. 

Now  the  illogical  Suffragist  mind  will  say  that  I 
am,  like  a  characteristic  man,  basing  my  opposition 
to  the  Suffrage  on  the  ground  that  man's  relation  to 
woman  is  that  of  the  parent  to  the  child  or  the 
pedagogue  to  the  pupil.  I  am,  of  course,  doing  noth- 
ing of  the  kind — though  even  that  proposition  is 
tenable  so  far  as  man  and  woman  in  the  State  are 
concerned.  But  I  am  merely  answering  the  argument 
that  authority  in  itself  is  bad,  engendering  tyranny 
and  slavishness,  and  that  man  had  better  renounce  his 
political  supremacy  on  that  ground  and  for  his  own 
sake.  And  to  that  argument  (which  really  comes 
from  Mill)  I  can  only  reply  that  if  it  were  true,  parents 
should  renounce  their  supremacy  and  authority  over 
their  children.  And  if  it  is  then  said  that  though 
parents  may  know  best  what  is  good  for  their  children 
yet  men  do  not  know  what  is  good  for  women,  the 
briefest  answer  is  the  best.  As  far  as  this  question  is 
concerned,  men  tliink  they  know  best,  and  most 
women  agree  with  them. 

Women's  Opinion  of  Women. 

And  in  coming  back  to  consider  whether  women 
are  inferior  to  men  as  political  animals  we  must  be 
struck  by  this  curious  thing :  that  it  is  not  only 
men,  but  most  women,  who  think  women  are  so 
inferior.  You  never  hear  a  man  say,  "  I  am  tired  of 
being  governed  by  men.  Men  weren't  made  for 
politics !  "  But  you  do  hear  women  say,  "  I  shudder 
at  the  idea  of  being  governed  by  women.  Women 


SEX  AND  POLITICS  i3> 


were  never  made  for  politics ! "  And  most  women 
think  that,  whether  they  say  it  or  not.  The  Suffragist, 
of  course,  will  say,  "  Oh,  that  is  merely  the  prejudice 
of  some  women — we  are  going  to  educate  them  out 
of  that."  And,  indeed,  Suffragists  are  adepts  in  the 
art  of  explaining  every  thing  that  does  not  suit  their 
case  by  some  theory  that  goes  out  of  its  way  to  avoid 
the  obvious.  And  in  this  case  the  obvious  deduction 
to  be  drawn  from  the  fact  that  most  women  think 
woman  is  unfitted  for  politics,  is  that  they  think  so 
because  they  know  tlieir  oii  n  sex. 

Let  us  ignore  altogether  the  fact  that  men  hold 
that  opinion  of  woman's  political  incapacity  ;  let  us 
ignore  the  fact  that  the  normal  and  average  woman 
lives  a  life  which  does  not  bring  her  into  contact 
with  those  realities  which  make  up  political  pheno- 
mena ;  let  us  ignore  every  actual  indication  of  ex- 
perience (such  as  the  Suffragists  themselves  so 
abundantly  supply)  that  women  are  really  unfitted 
for  political  thought  and  activity  ;  and  there  is  still 
left  the  extremely  awkward  and  difficult  fact  that 
most  women  think  so  too,  and  that  many  repre- 
sentative women,  from  Queen  Victoria  down  to  the 
late  Mrs  Craigie  and  Mrs  Humphrey  Ward,  hold  that 
woman  is  unfitted  for  all  that  is  implied  in  political 
enfranchisement.  Queen  Victoria,  of  course,  may  be 
struck  off  the  list — she  was  hopelessly  Victorian,  I 
suppose  the  Suffragists  will  say,  and  therefore  doesn't 
count.  But  Mrs  Craigie  (John  Oliver  Hobbes)  had 
one  of  the  most  penetrating  original  minds  to  be 
found  among  modern  women,  and  Mrs  Humphrey 
Ward's  eminence  needs  no  affirmation.  The  fact 
that  certain  eminent  women  hold  that  view  does 
not,  of  course,  settle  the  question ;  but  when  we 
find  that  the  view  is  not  exceptionally  or  sparsely 
held  by  women,  but  is  held  by  the  vast  majority 
of  women,  it  is  really  ridiculous  to  contend  that  it 
is  only  man's  impertinence  that  holds  woman  to  be 
his  inferior  in  political  capacity.  But  one  may  say 
that  the  view  is  not  held  so  much  as  that  it  is  a 


132  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


feeling  instinctively  felt  by  women  themselves  ;  and 
instinct  is  a  safer  guide  even  than  reason  in  a 
matter  which  logic  does  not  touch,  with  which  arith- 
metic has  nothing  to  do,  of  which  we  have  no 
experience,  and  which  cannot  be  proved  either  way 
by  any  strictly  logical  process.  But  the  burden  of 
proof,  if  it  were  possible  to  give  any,  should  rest 
upon  those  women  who  argumentatively  deny  the 
instinctive  feeling  of  the  vast  majority  of  their  sex. 

We  have  now  reached  a  point,  I  think,  when  we  can 
decide  the  first  question  concerned  with  giving  votes  to 
women  as  an  act  of  grace.  And  the  answer  is,  to  put 
the  statement  beyond  argument,  that  more  women  pray 
that  votes  may  not  be  given  as  an  act  of  grace,  or  for 
any  other  reason,  than  ask  for  the  vote  as  a  right  or  on 
any  other  ground. 

The  point  then  arises,  whether  we  should  force  the 
Vote  upon  those  who  don't  want  it  for  the  sake  of 
those  who  do.  That  would  obviously  be  doing  a  good 
deal  more  than  we  have  a  right  to  do,  even  if  we 
ignored  entirely  the  feelings  of  men  in  the  matter,  as 
the  electorate  actually  charged  with  the  responsibility 
of  deciding. 

But  even  the  words  "  for  the  sake  of  those  who  do" 
begs  the  question,  unless  "their  sake"  is  to  mean 
nothing  more  than  the  bare  gratification  of  their  own  de- 
sires, irrespective  of  the  desires  of  other  people.  But  let 
us  see  whether  if  the  vote  were  thrust  upon  women  who 
don't  want  it  for  the  sake  of  pleasing  those  who  do,  the 
State  would  be  likely  to  gain  anything  commensurate 
with  such  an  outrage  upon  all  understandable  principles 
of  government.  And  I  think  any  reasonable  person 
will  agree  that  the  case  must  again  be  overwhelming, 
and  must  reveal,  in  fact,  some  startling  consideration 
hitherto  undreamt  of  in  man's  philosophy. 


CHAPTER  XI. 


How  Could  Woman  Serve  The  State  ? 

woman's  political  judgment — man's  universal- 
ity— man  as  woman's  representative — woman's 
moral  nature — woman's  deficiency  of  public 
virtue — her  domestic  virtue — the  danger  of 

MORAL  excellence  IN  GOVERNMENT — THE  SUB- 
JECTION OF  WOMAN  TO  CLERICAL  INFLUENCE — THE 
SYMMETRICAL  STATE — HOME,  WOMAN,  AND  THE  PER- 
FECT STATE— ONE  IN  TWO. 


CHAPTER  XI. 


How  Could  Woman  Serve  The  State? 

We  are  going  to  try  to  discover  that  startling  consider- 
ation which  would  justify  a  vote  being  given  to  all 
women  against  the  wishes  of  the  majority  of  women  ; 
and  against  all  those  considerations,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  men,  that  have  so  far  been  urged.  It  is 
a  big  task,  but  if  I  fail  I  shall  have  succeeded  entirely 
to  my  own  satisfaction.  Indeed,  I  may  truly  say 
that  I  am  looking  for  what  I  do  not  expect  to  find 
in  order  to  prove  that  it  is  not  there. 

But  we  may  try  a  cast  or  two.  And  here  we  are  not 
yet  considering  whether  what  woman  or  the  State 
gained  by  woman's  political  activity  would  be  lost 
by  the  woman  or  the  State  through  her  withdrawal 
from  her  present  activities.  We  are  assuming  that 
all  her  political  interests  and  pursuits  conflict  with 
no  other  interests  whatever — that  although  all  she 
has  to  do  is  to  leave  home  behind  her  and  go  into 
the  world  of  general  industry  and  politics,  home  will 
not  suffer  by  her  withdrawal. 

Woman's  Political  Judgment. 

Well,  what  effect  is  she  likely  to  have  upon  the 
world  of  politics  and  the  State  so  far  as  we  now 
know  her  ?  It  is  said  that  she  will  bring  "  a  larger 
view "  to  the  consideration  of  political  questions.  I 
think  I  know  that  "  larger  view  " — it  is  generally 
the  impracticable,  the  unpractical,  the  irrelevant,  the 
lax,  and  even  the  narrow  view.  But  whence  and 
how  can  this  "  larger  view  "  come  to  woman  ?  Con- 
sidered as  an  intellectual  manifestation  it  cannot  come 
at  all,  for  we  know  that  man's  mental  capacity  is 
at  least  as  large  as  woman's — and,  of  course,  I  am 

135 


136  WOMAN  ADEIFT 


putting  my  case  at  the  lowest,  for  we  really  know 
that  woman  is  man's  intellectual  inferior,  even  if  the 
standard  be  set  by  sheer  pound  and  ounces  of  brain. 
It  will  then  be  said,  of  course,  that  woman  is  man's 
inferior  only  because  she  has  not  had  man's  opportun- 
ities and  experience  for  intellectual  development. 
But,  leaving  aside  altogether  the  very  wide  question 
of  how  far  her  intellectual  inferiority  may  be  inherent 
in  her  as  a  secondaty  sex  characteristic,  or  whether 
she  could  educate  herself  out  of  any  intellectual 
limitation,  all  we  can  say  is  that  in  order  to  reach 
man's  level  she  would  have  to  duplicate  man  through- 
out all  his  experiences,  and  by  the  time  she  had  done 
that  she  would,  unquestionably,  have  educated  herself 
out  of  all  her  secondary  sex  characteristics.  And  it 
is  a  moot  point  whether  she  could  not  even  go  so 
far  as  to  negative  or  modify  some  of  her  primary 
sex  characteristics,  for  what  evidence  we  have  of  that 
tendency  powerfully  suggests  that  intellectual  develop- 
ment plays  havoc  with  the  maternal  functions  and 
weakens  and  even  destroys  the  desire  to  exercise  it. 
But,  taking  women  as  they  are,  we  can  only  say 
that  the  potentiality  of  their  intellectual  equality  with 
man  can  be  proved  neither  one  way  nor  the  other, 
and  that  as  to  the  actuality,  the  case  is  against  them. 

For,  apart  altogether  from  man's  superior  quality 
or  quantity  of  brain,  the  mere  power  of  concentration 
that  he  has  for  any  intellectual  task  makes  him 
woman's  intellectual  superior.  Some  of  the  most 
pathetic  words  in  literature  are  those,  to  my  mind, 
in  which  Gibbon  speaks  of  his  walk  in  his  garden 
at  Lausanne  at  the  end  of  his  long  task,  and  of  how 
much  of  his  life  has  gone  with  the  doing  of  it.  One 
simply  cannot  imagine  a  woman  undertaking  so  stu- 
pendous a  task  as  "The  Decline  and  Fall,"  or  producing 
such  a  system  of  philosophy,  against  chronic  ill-health, 
as  Herbert  Spencer's  long  life-work.  But  if  it  be  con- 
tested that  woman  is  not  man's  intellectual  inferior,  I 
can  only  ask  in  what  intellectual  occupation  she  shows 
herself  his  superior,  and  pass  on  whilst  waiting  for  the 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  i37 


reply.  We  have  no  reason  whatever,  not  the  remotest 
reason  from  any  ascertained  fact  at  all,  to  suppose  that 
a  Parliament  of  women  or  an  electorate  of  women 
would  or  could  take  any  saner,  wiser,  or  really  larger 
view  of  a  given  political  question  than  a  Parliament  or 
an  electorate  of  men — though  I  am  by  no  means  con- 
tending that  those  men  who  do  find  their  way  into 
Parliament  are  the  intellectual  champions  of  their  sex 
i  that  the  male  electorate  has  reached  finality  in 
intelligence. 

Man's  Universality. 

Nor  would  their  experience  of  life  help  them  to  give 
a  saner  and  completer  judgment.  After  all,  with  the 
one  exception  of  maternity,  man  has  every  experience 
under  the  sun.  If  finance  is  talked  of,  forward  come 
the  bankers.  If  foreign  affairs  are  talked  of,  forward 
come  the  diplomatists  and  travellers,  If  arts,  science 
or  literature  are  discussed,  forward  come  the  artists, 
the  scientists,  the  men  of  letters.  And  so  on  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter  of  every  human  activity.  And  even 
those  questions  and  conditions  directly  and  even 
exclusively  affecting  women  have  their  male  experts — 
maternity  homes,  female  wards  of  workhouses,  even 
dressmaking,  laundries,  and  the  work  of  pit-brow 
women  are  familiar  ground  to  men,  and  they  can  speak 
of  the  conditions  prevailing  not  only  without  great 
ignorance  but  often  with  the  completest  possible 
knowledge.  But  how  innumerable  are  those  activities 
and  interests  of  men  concerning  which  women  know 
next  to  nothing — and  it  is  these  affairs  of  men  rather 
than  the  affairs  of  women  that  make  up  the  main  body 
of  political  questions.  It  is  therefore  supremely  ridicul- 
ous to  suppose  that  by  actual  experience  of  life  and 
affairs,  any  more  than  by  intellectual  capacity,  woman 
will  reveal  a  larger  vision  of  any  political  measure  or 
proposal  than  man  —  short  of  some  proposal  touching 
the  home  itself  But  even  thereupon  man  has  some- 
thing to  say,  and  he  knows  a  good  deal  more  about  the 
affairs  of  the  home  than  woman  knows  of  those  affairs 

E 


138 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


of  his  which  are  practically  inaccessible  to  her — those 
innumerable  male  interests  into  which  woman  does 
not  penetrate  at  all.  Moreover,  so  long  as  men  live 
in  houses,  the  home  is  man's  affair  too. 

Where,  then,  is  the  larger  vision  of  woman  to  come 
from  ?  She  is  not  going  to  sit  down  and  cerebrate 
herself  into  a  higher  degree  of  intellect  than  she  has 
got  brain  power  to  provide  and  be  the  mother  of  the 
race  and  the  worker  in  it  at  the  same  time.  Where, 
then,  is  she  going  to  get  her  superior  or  equal  political 
acumen  from  ?  What  reason  have  we  to  suppose  that 
woman,  in  entering  politics,  will  do  more  than  she  has 
done  in  entering  every  other  sphere — bring  subordinate 
and  second  rate  intellect  and  powers,  even  at  their 
highest,  and  so  merely  increase  the  number  of  represent- 
tative  opinions  without  increasing  the  stock  of  human 
wisdom  ?  How  and  why  is  she  going  to  contribute 
anything  really  worth  the  price  of  a  big  revolution  to 
those  problems  which  vex  the  soul  and  mind  of  man, 
although  he  knows  most  about  them,  and  although  his 
mind  is  at  any  rate  not  inferior  to  hers  ?  I  see  no  hope 
for  this  new  and  larger  vision  —  no  hidden  spring  from 
which  this  surprise  is  to  come.  Women  would  be,  let 
us  say,  very  like  men,  only  less  so.  Possibly.  But  the 
idea  that  woman  could  bring  any  superlative  quality 
to  politics,  is  a  wild  assumption  which  there  is  nothing 
we  know  concerning  woman  to  justify. 

Man  as  Woman's 
Representative. 

But,  to  step  again  out  of  the  line  of  argument  to 
meet  an  irrelevancy,  the  Suffragist  who  has  no  answer 
to  that  may  say,  "  Whether  we  brought  any  original 
talents  to  politics  isn't  the  point.  We  still  think  we 
should,  but  the  point  is  that  we  should  be  able  to  look 
after  and  control  our  own  interests."  Well,  even  that 
begs  the  question,  for  most  women  would  still  rather 
trust  their  own  material  interests  in  the  hands  of  men. 
But  in  giving  them  power  to  control  their  own  in- 
terests— which  I  should  not  object  to  if  they  could 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  i39 


be  segregated  from  ours  —  they  would  be  given  also 
the  power  to  control  the  interests  of  men,  and  that 
point  is  entirely  forgotten  when  Suffragists  say,  "  We 
merely  want  to  look  after  our  own  interests  in  our  own 
way,"  and  when  fervent  but  rather  loose-thinkin§> 
politicians  fling  out  their  arms  and  say,  "  All  we  ask 
is  that  the  custodian  of  that  cupboard  shall  have  a 
weapon  with  which  to  defend  her  children's  bread  !  "  — 
a  passage  that  simply  nauseavss  the  intellect.  If  some 
political  genius  could  devise  a  constitution  which  would 
first  separate  the  interests  of  men  and  women,  and 
then  allow  them  to  be  voted  upon  separately  by  each, 
leaving  man  to  be  the  ruler  as  now  over  all  those  many 
things  in  which  differences  of  sex-interest  disappeared, 
I  think  he  would  deserve  to  be  listened  to,  if  only  for 
his  ingenuity. 

But  the  argument  that  in  admitting  women  to 
political  power  you  are  doing  no  more  than  justice  to 
them  by  giving  them  power  to  control  their  own 
affairs,  is  answered  by  the  obvious  fact  that  you  are 
also  giving  them  power  to  control  your  affairs.  And 
that  is  not  the  sort  of  Home  Rule  for  the  sexes  that 
is  possible.  Even  Ireland  says,  "  Let  us  manage  our 
own  affairs,  and  you  can  do  what  the  devil  you  like 
with  yours  !  "  But  the  separate  interests  of  Ireland 
and  Great  Britain  are  much  more  easily  delimited 
than  the  separate  interests  of  the  sexes.  Moreover. 
except  in  legislation  for  protecting  women,  man  has 
always  legislated  in  the  spirit  that  the  well-being  of 
one  sex  is  the  well-being  of  the  other. 

I  noticed  that  a  lady  Suffragist  argued  some  months 
ago  that  in  Parliament  "  teachers,  milliners,  laundry 
girls,  factory  girls,  and  women  workers  generally  "  were 
imperfectly  represented,  and  "  mothers  and  wives  not 
at  all " !  Well,  if  Parliament  were  a  Trades'  Union 
Congress,  and  the  electoral  constituencies  were  not 
towns  but  trades  and  not  counties  but  professions, 
that  would  be  a  very  intelligent  argument  indeed,  and 
it  would  be  a  pleasure  to  come  across  it.  But  the 
Imperial  Parliament  is  not  a  Trades'  Union  Congress, 


HO  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


but  is  the  executive  government  of  a  big  Empire 
And  Parliament  represents  not  trades  and  professions 
but  the  men,  women,  and  children  of  the  various 
classes  of  the  community,  so  that  the  women  of  each 
class  are  represented  in  the  Commons  just  as  much  as 
peeresses  are  represented  in  the  Lords.  And  as  to 
"  mothers  and  wives "  being  "  not  represented  at  all," 
how  could  a  man  in  any  given  class  vote  so  as  not  to 
represent  his  wife  upon  any  ordinary  question  sub- 
mitted to  Parliament  ?  We  can  only  assume,  in  a 
rational  world,  that  he  represents  her  interests  by  his 
vote,  just  as  he  represents  her  interests  by  his  labour. 
I  marvel  at  the  essential  meanness  of  the  mind  that, 
looking  round  on  man's  little  territory  of  power  (for 
woman's  power  over  man  in  everything  that  politics 
does  not  touch  is  great  enough  already),  covets  that, 
and  wishes  to  enter  it,  and  yet  cannot  and  does  not 
hope  to  share  in  those  more  arduous  fields  wherein 
man  is  representing  woman  by  every  hour  he  works 
and  by  every  shilling  he  earns. 

And  now  we  can  return  to  the  high  road  again. 

Woman's  Moral  Nature. 

But  if  women  cannot  bring  higher  intellectual  gifts 
or  greater  experience  to  politics  than  men,  is  there 
nothing  in  their  natures  which  gives  them  some 
advantage  over  men  ?  Man  is  their  physical  superior, 
and  is  at  least  not  their  mental  inferior,  but  have  they 
no  quality  which  makes  them  superior  to  men  and 
which  they  could  place  at  the  service  of  the  State  ? 
Well,  those  are  fair  questions,  though  I  ask  them  of 
myself  Physically  and  intellectually,  man  is  woman's 
superior  ;  in  moral  qualities,  I  think,  woman  is  man's 
superior.  But  the  moral  qualities  act  differently  in 
each.  Man  is  certainly  not  inferior  to  woman  in 
moral  perception.  That  is  clear  when  we  think  that 
all  the  great  ethical  teachers,  all  the  great  inculcators 
of  moral  principles,  have  been  men,  though  woman  has 
certainly  been  placed  in  no  position  of  disadvantage  by 
man  that  has  restrained  her  from  expressing  herself  as 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  141 


an  ethical  teacher.  And  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale 
men  have  finer  perceptions  in  regard  to  those  minor 
moral  points  which  come  within  what  we  call  a  code  of 
honour.  For  instance,  a  woman  has  less  scruple  about 
paying  her  gambling  debts  than  men,  and  it  is  doing  no 
injustice  to  the  sex  to  say  that  they  are  the  finest 
kleptomaniacs,  if  I  may  so  express  the  point,  in  the 
world.  But  though  woman  has  no  better  grasp  of 
moral  principles  than  man,  though  her  moral  per- 
ceptions are  no  keener  than  his,  her  moral  example 
acts  more  directly  than  man's,  and  it  needs  a  personal 
object  for  its  expression.  Woman's  morality,  in  fact, 
is  seen  at  its  best  advantage  in  direct  personal 
influence,  and  that  is  why  we  pity  children  who  have 
lost  their  mother  early,  and  say  of  a  girl,  "  Ah,  poor 
child  !  she  never  had  the  benefit  of  a  mother."  You 
do  not  so  often  hear  that  a  child  has  suffered,  in 
his  moral  upbringing,  because  he  lost  his  father  at 
an  early  age. 

But  man  exerts  his  moral  influence  as  a  great  teacher 
of  men — of  men  in  the  mass.  I  suppose  that  even  the 
last  rumblings  of  political  prejudice  will  not  mutter 
a  denial  of  the  supreme  moral  influence  of  Gladstone — 
but  I  suppose  no  one  will  deny,  either,  that  Mrs 
Gladstone  made  it  possible  for  him  to  be  a  great 
man.  He  may  not  have  found  his  inspiration  in 
her — that  came  from  his  own  moral  character  (or 
perhaps  ultimately  from  his  religious  faith),  whatever 
be  thought  by  partisan  opinion  of  its  excesses  in 
action.  But  unquestionably  he  found  in  her  the 
solace  and  support  which  sustained  him  in  his 
public  action  as  a  political  moralist — and  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  one  can  hardly  find  the  respective  functions 
of  man  and  woman,  in  their  perfection  of  delimitation, 
better  personified  than  in  Gladstone  and  his  wife.  She 
was  really  the  other  half  of  him,  his  complement — 
as  all  perfect  wives  are  to  the  husbands  who  deserve 
them. 

But  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow  that  the  simple 
possession  of  high  moral  qualities  fits  their  possessor 


X42  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


for  any  function  of  government.  Some  of  the  saintliest 
men  and  women  the  human  race  has  ever  produced 
would  have  been  the  most  impossible  people  in  the 
world  to  be  set  over  others  in  actual  authority.  When 
high  moral  qualities  are  valuable  is  when  they  are 
allied  to  that  breadth  of  view  and  that  experience  of 
life  which  alone  can  make  them  most  effective 
and  that  alone  can  prevent  them  becoming  even 
dangerous  to  the  State.  Nor  does  it  follow  that 
because  woman's  moral  qualities  are  generally  found 
exerted  for  the  benefit  of  those  people  in  whose 
lives  she  has  a  direct  personal  concern,  that  they  would 
be  found  equally  pronounced  when  set  to  the  service  of 
the  State. 

Woman's  Deficiency  of 
"Public  Virtue." 

It  is  difficult  for  any  one  to  deny  that  women  allow 
their  hostile  prejudices,  and  their  very  self-protective 
wariness,  to  be  aroused  much  more  easily  than  men. 
Mr  Gladstone  was  once  attending  the  funeral  of  a  well- 
known  Englishman,  during  the  first  Home  Rule 
ferment,  and  it  was  mentioned,  in  the  hearing  of 
an  old  lady  at  the  graveside,  that  that  illustrious 
but  then  maligned  statesman  was  standing  near  to 
her.  "  Oh,  dear  !  "  she  said,  as  she  stole  a  horrified 
look  at  him,  "  I  do  hope  that  he  won't  make  any 
disturbance ! "  Now,  most  old  ladies  might  not 
have  said  that,  but  certainly  no  old  gentleman  who 
ever  lived  could  have  said  it.  And  the  particular 
psychological  operation  that  sent  those  grotesquely 
comic  yet  really  awful  words  to  her  lips,  is  precisely 
the  operation  that  prevents  a  woman  seeing  any 
question  dispassionately  when  it  concerns  her  own 
personal  interests  (for  I  am  sure  that  the  old  lady 
in  the  churchyard  had  perverted  the  strong  language 
concerning  Mr  Gladstone  that  she  had  heard  from 
the  male  members  of  her  family  into  her  own  settled 
conviction  that  Gladstone  was  an  atheistical  and 
criminal-minded  character).    I  do  not  say  that  this 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  i43 


limitation  is  a  fault  of  woman's  nature.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  in  its  way  and  short  of  absurd  excesses, 
a  very  desirable  trait,  for  it  indicates  that  her  first 
thought  is  for  her  own — not  necessarily  for  herself  at 
all — but  that  narrow  and  concentrated  habit  of  mind 
produces  a  defect  of  judgment  which  might  make 
women  even  a  danger  in  politics. 

But  it  will  perhaps  be  objected  that  I  am  libelling 
the  sex  in  saying  that  a  woman  cannot  see  any 
question  dispassionately  when  it  touches  the  interests 
of  herself  or  her  own  people.  Well,  to  take  a  large 
question,  many  women  are  now  found  suggesting  that 
the  institution  of  marriage  should  go  into  the  melting 
pot,  and  in  many  cases  the  bias  in  their  mind  against 
marriage  arises  from  the  unhappiness  of  their  own 
personal  experience.  But  men  do  not  so  readily 
allow  their  own  personal  experiences  to  condemn 
an  existing  institution.  Many  men,  themselves  un- 
happily married,  may  nevertheless  desire  to  maintain 
the  institution  of  marriage  because  they  see  in  it  a 
form  of  regulatifig  the  relations  of  the  sexes  which, 
if  it  brings  individual  hardship,  nevertheless  ensures 
the  general  social  stability.  In  such  a  question,  in 
fact,  men  take  the  large  view,  or,  at  any  rate,  the 
dispassionate  view.  And  to  take  a  smaller  issue,  most 
people's  domestic  experience  will  reveal,  ifthey  make 
a  littfe  effort  in  ra^mory,  some  crisis  or  state  of  affairs 
when  It  was  a  question  of  a  man  stepping  outside 
his  own  sphere  of  interests  to  do  something  that 
would  not  bring  him  any  personal  advantage,  but 
might  even  damage  it,  and  when  the  bias  of  the 
woman's  advice  has  been  "to  leave  things  alone" — 
and  very  often  it  may  be  very  good  advice,  too.  But 
the  view  taken  is  not  the  "larger"  view  at  all — it 
is  the  nari'ow,  prudent,  self-preserving  view. 

But  again  it  may  be  said,  "  That  is  merely  your  own 
prejudit<;d  generalisation,  and  there  is  no  real  truth  in 
it."  And  I  should  have  to  leave  it  at  that — my 
assertion,  supported  by  a  good  many  people's  ex- 
perience, against  the  denial  —  but  for  the  fact  that  I 


144 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


can  call  a  witness  to  support  me  whose  evidence  even 
Suffragists  have  got  to  accept,  for  he  is  their  own 
witness,  and  upon  this  point  is  speaking  in  their  caus;. 
The  witness  is  John  Stuart  Mill,  and  the  evidence  is 
to  be  found  in  "  The  Subjection  of  Women." 

"I  am  afraid  it  must  be  said"  (he  writes,  page  i6i,  ed.  1869) 
"that  disinterestedness  in  the  general  conduct  of  life — the  de- 
votion of  the  energies  to  purposes  which  hold  out  no  promise 
of  direct  advantage  to  the  family — is  very  seldom  encouraged 
or  supported  by  women's  influence.  It  is  small  blame  to  them 
that  they  discourage  objects  of  which  they  have  not  learned  to 
see  the  advantage,  and  which  withdraw  their  men  from  them, 
and  from  the  interests  of  the  family.  But  the  consequence  is 
that  women's  influence  is  often  anything  but  favourable  to  public 
virtue." 

Of  course  Mill  believed  that  experience  of  public 
life  would  cultivate  in  women  public  virtues,  but  they 
could,  on  his  own  showing,  only  be  cultivated  at  the 
expense  of  what  is  really  another  high  and  important 
virtue — a  solicitude  for  the  family  interests.  And  the 
plain,  simple  and  human  truth  is  that  we  do  not  need 
women  to  cultivate  public  virtues  at  all,  especially  if 
they  are  going  to  upset  the  balance  between  the  two 
forces  now  acting  :  the  public  sense  of  the  man  and 
the  private  and  family  sense  of  the  woman.  What 
Mill  loo'.ed  upon  as  a  defect  in  woman  that  public 
experience  might  remedy,  I  venture  to  look  upon  as 
a  safeguard  for  the  family  interests  that  an  acquired 
sense  of  public  virtues  would  destroy. 

Her  Domestic  Virtue. 

Mill  had,  in  fact,  stumbled  upon  a  bigger  admission 
than  he  thought  he  was  making  or  hoped  would  be 
perceived,  for  nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  danger 
of  woman  crossing  over  from  one  sphere  and  entering 
another  than  that  both  she  and  man  would  then  be 
moving  in  the  same  direction  as  far  as  public  activities 
are  concerned,  and  that  direction  away  from  the 
interests  of  the  home.  And  whether  or  not,  as  Mill 
was  contending,  experience  of  public  affairs  would 
negative  this  natural  predilection  of  woman  for  the 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  i45 


family  interests,  it  is  certain  that  the  fact  that  she 
has  got  the  predilection  at  all  is  an  excellent  thing, 
and  some  proof  that  she  is  in  just  the  place  where  she 
is  most  wanted  when  she  is  at  home  looking  after  the 
interests  of  the  family — the  guardian,  the  conserver, 
the  upholder  of  family  life. 

And  upon  this  point  we  may  in  all  reason  say  that 
in  so  far  as  women  are  disqualified  by  the  limitation 
Mill  speaks  of  from  disinterested  public  service,  they 
are  qualified  eminently  and  wholesomely  as  the 
guardians  of  family  interests ;  and  that  they  would 
only  laboriously  acquire  a  virtue  which  the  world 
does  not  need  in  them  at  the  expense  of  a  virtue  in 
them  which  the  family  cannot  spare. 

The  Danger  of  Moral 
Excellence  in  Government. 

A  few  pages  back  I  said  that  high  moral  qualities, 
unsupported  by  breadth  of  view  which  a  practical 
experience  of  life  affords,  might  even  be  dangerous 
in  the  State,  and  Mr  Frederic  Harrison — one  of  the 
great  humanists  of  our  time — in  whose  long  life  high 
moral  qualities  and  a  wide  experience  of  life  assuredly 
meet,  each  in  a  high  degree  of  perfection  —  brings  out 
very  clearly  in  what  is  practically  his  autobiography, 
"  Realities  and  Ideals,"  the  disability  that  hampers  the 
moral  reformer  in  political  action,  and  the  defect  of 
his  qualities : 

"  It  is  a  fixed  psychologic  law  that  the  earnestness  of  moral  and 
spiritual  emotion — which  is  the  strength  and  beauty  of  the  higher 
natures — too  often  shuts  off  from  the  ken  of  those  most  deeply 
moved  the  nice  adjustment  of  balance  in  competing  good  and 
evil,  usefulness  and  risk.  St  Bernard,  St  Francis,  F^nelon, 
Wesley,  the  Slavery  and  the  Drink  Abolitionists,  had  noble 
messages  to  deliver,  but  they  would  prove  most  oppressive  legis- 
lators and  judges.  Their  very  merit  lay  in  their  bold  defiance  of 
obstacles,  their  indifference  to  all  countervailing  risks,  their 
disdain  of  compromise.  But  compromise  is  the  daily  and  hourly 
necessity  of  practical  affairs.  And  those  who  disdain  com- 
promise are  ever  on  the  verge  of  oppression  and  disaeter,  and  too 
often  face  both  together  with  a  light  heart.  We  are  bound  to 
bear  and  weigh  all  that  such  men  can  urge.     But  it  is  for  men  of 


146  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


a  very  different  stamp— ofterj  it  may  be  men  of  a  stamp  more 
common  and  less  fine — to  decide  the  issue  and  abide  the  result. 

Now  women  in  the  average,  as  a  sex,  share  this  nature.  They 
form  opinions  more  quickly,  less  patiently,  less  coolly  than  do 
men.  Emotion,  prejudice,  sentiment,  play  a  larger  part  in  their 
decisions  than  in  those  of  men.  They  are  less  in  the  habit  of 
facing  practical  risks  and  dilemmas.  They  will  not  take  pains  to 
walk  all  round  embarrassing  crises  before  they  decide  ;  nor  do 
they  habitually  weigh  all  sides  of  a  question  with  a  fair,  im- 
partial temper.  It  would  be  laughable  to  tell  us  that  men  and 
women  are  equally  fitted  by  nature  to  form  a  balanced  judgment 
of  this  kind.  Common  sense  records  the  contrary  as  a  fact. 
But  all  political  questions  and  all  parliamentary  elections  really 
turn,  or  ought  to  turn,  on  nicely  balanced  judgments  of  this 
sort  

The  real  objection  to  'Votes  for  Women,'  over  and  obove 
that  it  risks  imposing  on  men  sacrifices  of  labour  and  life  which 
women  do  not  share,  is  this — that  it  degrades  and  weakens  the 
moral  and  emotional  influence  which  women  indirectly  give 
to  men  and  have  never  failed  to  give.  The  power  of  women  to 
moralise  life  and  to  modify  action  is  not  lost  because  it  is  exerted 
in  society,  in  the  home,  in  literature,  in  education.  To  sink  this 
high  and  ennobling  influence  in  the  rousih-and-tumble  of 
elections  would  be  to  debtroy  and  debase  it." 

I  do  not  think  I  need  carry  any  further  than  those 
words,  in  support  of  my  own,  the  argument  that  the 
superior  moral  character  of  woman  would  not  neces- 
sarily be  manifest  as  a  gain  to  the  State  ;  but  that 
it  would  necessarily  work  to  the  disadvantage  of  that 
calm  judgment  in  political  affairs  which  even  as 
things  are,  is  not  too  conspicuous,  for  it  seems  to  be 
the  peculiar  property  of  political  discussiori  to  em- 
phasise the  meanest  as  well  as  the  noblest  side  of  the 
human  character. 

**  The  Subjection  of  Women  " 
to  Clerical  Influence. 

But  if  women  can  exert  a  strong  moral  influence, 
they  can  also  be  influenced ;  and  one  influence  to 
which  they  are  said  to  be  subject  is  that  of  clerical 
influence.  As  I  have  no  first  hand  evidence  of  this, 
from  any  personal  knowledge,  I  should  not  raise  the 
point  but  for  being  able  to  give  what  I  think  is  very 
satisfactory  testimony  of  the  experience  of  others.  Mr 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  U7 


John  Massie,  a  Liberal  ex-M.P.,  is  one  of  the  foremost 
opponents  of  Woman  Suffrage,  and  he  cites  a  clergy- 
man who  said  to  the  Member  for  his  Division :  "  I 
don't  believe  in  Woman  Suffrage  for  the  country,  but  I 
suppose  it  would  be  good  for  our  voluntary  schools  !  " 
and  the  implication  of  that  musing  is  pretty  apparent. 
But  so  many  instances  of  that  kind  have  been  given 
that  one  almost  ceases  to  appreciate  the  general  truth 
in  so  much  reiteration. 

But  far  better  evidence  than  that  can  be  given  of  the 
"  subjection  of  women  "  to  clerical  influence — which 
was,  by  the  way,  one  of  Mill's  own  admissions  against 
them.  For  the  Church,  like  the  Imperial  Parliament, 
has  its  two  houses,  with  a  House  of  Laymen  in  each 
Province,  and  the  lay  representatives  are  men,  elected 
upon  a  male  franchise  ;  so  that  the  Church  is  now 
governed  by  men,  just  as  is  the  State.  But  the  Bishop 
of  Oxford,  Dr  Gore,  happens  to  be  a  Suffragist,  and  he 
wishes  the  Church  to  be  brought  into  line  with  the 
woman's  movement  in  the  secular  sphere.  But,  in 
passing,  I  should  say  that  he  is  the  sort  of  Suffragist 
(in  the  Church)  who  knows  where  to  draw  the  line 
where  women  are  concerned.  For  in  proposing  that 
the  franchise  for  election  to  the  Houses  of  Laymen 
should  be  altered  to  include  women,  he  was  careful  to 
say  that  "  the  great  negative  principle  of  the  Church 
was  that  the  priesthood  should  belong  to  men  ;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  Church  admitted  women  as  deacon- 
esses, patronesses,  and  churchwardens."  And  that  is 
just  the  sort  of  distinction  that  Anti-suffragists  make  : 
"  the  great  negative  principle  of  the  State  is  that  the 
government  should  belong  to  men  ;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  State  has  admitted  women  to  be  members  of  school 
boards,  town  councils,  and  boards  of  guardians." 

But  the  proposal  of  the  Bishop  that  the  Houses  of 
Laymen  should  be  based  upon  a  female  as  well  as 
a  male  franchise  was  strenuously  opposed  at  a  sitting 
of  the  Representative  Church  Council  on  November  22, 
191 1.  And  the  opposition  to  the  proposal,  stated  not 
by  anti-churchmen,  but  by  prominent  laymen  in  the 


148  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Church,  and  to  the  faces  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury and  all  the  Bishops  present,  was  that  women  were 
so  prone  to  clerical  influence  that  the  Houses  of  Lay- 
men would  no  longer  represent  the  laity,  but  the  clergy. 
So  that,  as  Mr  H.  J.  Torr  said,  "  the  introduction  of  a 
large  element  of  feminine  intellect  would  seriously 
disturb  the  balance  between  lay  and  clerical  influence." 
And  then,  before  all  the  Bishops,  he  tried  to  make 
his  point  clearer  : 

"You  have  to  face  the  fact,"  he  continued,  "that  a  large 
proportion  of  women  voters  would  be  influenced  by — "  and  then 
he  stopped,  somewhat  embarrassed,  finally  adding,  amid 
laughter,  "You  know  what  I  mean!"  {The  Standard  report, 
Nov.  2 J,  igii.) 

And  he  concluded  :  "  What  we  need  in  the  Church 

is  to  get  the  masculine  lay  mind  to  bear  on  Church 
questions.  But  if  we  were  to  clericalise  that  lay  mind, 
we  should  undo  very  much  of  the  value  of  the  lay  voice." 
No  doubt  it  required  some  courage  to  express  that 
point  of  view  before  the  assembled  Bishops,  and  I  can 
quite  understand  the  momentary  embarrassment  which, 
however,  was  triumphed  over  by  courage.  And  Canon 
Hensley  Henson,  who  is  obviously  not  a  layman,  said  : 
"  If  they  were  to  throw  the  franchise  (for  the  Houses  of 
Laymen)  open  to  women  on  equal  terms  with  men, 
it  would  give  an  immense  and  very  undesirable  excess 
of  influence  to  the  unmarried  Bishop  !  " 

That  debate,  among  Bishops  and  laymen,  goes  very 
far  indeed  towards  establishing  the  truth  that  women 
are  subject  to  clerical  influence  ;  and  though  clerical 
influence  in  Church  matters  may  or  may  not  be  a 
desirable  thing  (though  it  could  hardly  be  that  if  it 
would  clericalise  the  Houses  of  Laymen)  clerical  in- 
fluence in  the  State  is  not  desirable,  if  only  because  it 
works  in  a  rather  subterranean  fashion,  and  is  not 
easily  counteracted.  No  doubt  some  of  the  Suffragists 
themselves  might  be  altogether  above  that  influence, 
and  do  not  greatly  come  into  contact  with  it,  but  in 
opposing  Woman  Suffrage  it  has  to  be  opposed  not 
because  of  what  Suffragists  themselves  might  or  might 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  i49 


not  do,  but  on  the  grounds  of  considerations  applying 
to  one  sex  and  the  other  sex,  taken  as  such.  So  that 
in  one  direction  at  least  the  women  might  be  expected 
not  to  "  purify  "  politics  so  much  as  to  clericalise  them. 

The  Symmetrical  State. 

There  is  one  other  question  that  may  be  briefly 
dealt  with  in  this  chapter,  for  it  concerns,  though  not 
so  closely,  the  enquiry  with  which  the  chapter  began, 
of  what  the  State  would  gain  by  woman's  political 
activity.  There  are  some  theorists  who  hold  that  the 
extension  of  political  power  to  women  is,  even  though 
it  be  a  final  and  remote  step,  the  indispensable  step  to 
the  accomplishment  of  the  perfect  State.  They  do  not 
necessarily  say  so  because  they  favour  the  extension  of 
the  Suffrage  now,  or  because  they  think  the  time  has 
yet  come  for  it,  but  they  think  it  must  come,  if  at  some 
distant  day,  in  order  to  complete  the  symmetry  of  the 
State.  The  point  is  of  more  than  abstract  importance,  of 
course,  for  in  it  is  involved  this  question  :  Whether  the 
extension  of  political  power  to  women  is  part  of  the 
process  of  social  and  political  evolution,  or  whether 
it  is  going  off  the  track  altogether.  And  these 
theorists,  many  of  them  even  regretfully,  no  doubt, 
think  that  it  must  be  part  of  the  evolutionary  process, 
because  they  cannot  conceive  the  State  as  a  symmetri- 
cally complete  thing  if  it  does  not  include  women  in  it. 

Well,  a  State  is  not  a  work  of  art,  so  we  may 
disregard  the  symmetry  that  is  visualised  onie  by 
the  aesthetic  imagination.  The  only  symmetry  v  hich 
need  concern  us  is  that  which  does  not  satisfy  the  eye, 
but  which  gives  stability  to  the  structure,  and  which 
saves  it  from  being  lop-sided  or  top-heavy.  And 
if  we  consider  the  State  either  in  the  narrower  sense 
and  truer  sense  of  a  political  entity,  or  in  the  wider 
sense  of  the  active  industrial  and  productive  com- 
munity, a  State  which  is  based  upon  democratic 
manhood  control  is  broadly  based,  at  any  rate,  and 
the  strength  and  stability  of  the  structure,  and  therefore 
its   real   symmetry,  will   entirely  depend   upon  no 


ISO  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


material  being  built  into  it  which  is  not  equal  to  the 
strain  that  it  might  have  to  bear  ;  and  that  danger 
at  any  rate  would  be  averted  by  the  structure  being 
confined  to  man. 

But  there  is  a  still  wider  conception  of  the  State, 
if  we  include  in  it  the  whole  community,  and  imagine 
it  not  as  a  structure  with  a  base  and  an  apex,  but 
a  social  organism — a  collection  of  human  beings, 
getting  through  life  in  the  happiest  way.  From  any 
such  conception  it  is  difficult  to  exclude  the  home, 
unless  the  mind  travels  far  enough  to  perceive  the 
State  as  pervading  the  entire  life  of  the  community 
as  matter  pervades  the  material  world,  when  the 
activities  of  the  State  were  organised  up  to  such  a 
point  in  the  governing  of  men's  lives  that  men  would 
thank  the  gods  for  the  escape  that  death  provided. 
That  ultimate  conception  of  the  State  is  certainly 
possible,  and  he  would  be  as  bold  a  man  who  would 
deny  this  possibility  as  he  who  asserted  it :  that 
some  day  a  democracy  may  rise  to  uncoil  itself  from  its 
own  chains,  free  itself  from  its  own  tyrannies,  and 
shake  off  its  own  bureaucrats. 

Home,  Woman,  and 
the  Perfect  State. 

But  if  we  think  of  the  State  as  a  community  in 
which  government  is  not  carried  up  to  the  point  at 
which  men  have  put  their  own  individualities  in  a 
Statec^-^igeonhole,  and  in  which  a  man  can  still  call 
his  c  ^.uren  his  own,  the  home  must  surely  still  hold  its 
placfe  if  only  as  the  temple  of  the  one  side  of  life 
left  CO  the  individual  man's  own  government.  And 
the  more  perfectly  ordered  the  State  was  (if  it  had 
not  lost  sight  of  human  happiness  as  its  aim)  the 
more  inviolate  from  the  State  would  be  that  last 
little  bit  of  territory  whereon  the  individual  man  could 
take  his  stand.  And  in  that  inviolacy  woman  would 
then  hold  a  prouder  place  —  prouder,  because  we 
may  at  least  suppose  that  in  the  perfect  State  we 
are  discussing  the  perfection  would  dJt  any  rate  have 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  151 


gone  far  enough  to  ensure  the  material  needs  of  the 
home,  and  to  relieve  woman  of  the  domestic  cares 
that  beset  her  to-day. 

For  we  are  considering  the  perfect  and  symmetrical 
State — unattainable  ideal  though  it  may  be.  And 
not  only  is  there  no  sense  of  a  lack  of  symmetry  in 
a  conception  of  the  State  as  one  in  which  men  looked 
after  their  work  and  the  women  looked  after  their 
homes,  but  it  is  the  very  perfection  of  its  symmetry 
which  baulks  the  imagination  and  makes  the  concep- 
tion difficult.  But  it  is  certainly  a  more  pleasing 
and  symmetrical  conception  of  the  State  than  that  of  a 
State  in  which  the  industrialism  of  women  ran  along- 
side that  of  men,  and  the  two  sexes  flowed  in  rivalry 
along  the  same  channels  of  material  and  political 
activity,  and  the  home  became  subject  to  State 
inspection  as  a  consequence  of  the  employment  of 
State  foster-mothers,  charged  with  the  duty  of 
supplementing  the  impaired  superintendence  of  a 
mother  somewhere  else  in  the  State's  employ  ;  or 
a  State  in  which  we  can  visualise  each  individual  adult 
unit  dwelling  in  a  cubicle,  and  the  State's  children 
marched  off  at  curfew  time  to  the  State  dormitories. 

But,  dealing  with  conditions  so  far  remote  from 
anything  we  can  clearly  conceive  at  all,  it  is  at  least  as 
easy  to  suppose  that  the  more  highly  organised  a  State 
was,  and  the  more  settled  the  conditions  of  life  within 
it  were,  the  greater  security,  dignity,  and  authority 
there  would  be  in  woman's  position  in  the  home  ;  as 
it  is  to  suppose  that  in  the  perfect  State  she  would 
have  carried  her  public  virtues  into  every  department 
of  the  State's  activity,  and  have  arrived  at  that 
negation  of  the  family  virtues  which  was  apparently 
Mill's  ideal. 

"  One  in  Two/' 

Miss  Christabel  Pankhurst,  who  can  be  much  more 
interesting  and  effective  as  an  argumentative  force  than 
as  an  exponent  of  a  blind-alley  militancy,  has  defended 
the  imitation  of  man  by  woman  because  she  thinks 


152  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


it  illustrates  the  whole  process  of  biological  evolution 
—  a  progress  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  with 
a  corresponding  "  variety  of  function."  But  the 
progress  from  the  simple  to  the  complex  works  out 
in  quite  another  way,  for  it  is  attained  dy  diff et  entiaiion 
of  function,  and  not  by  one  structure  doing  the  work 
for  which  another  structure  was  intended.  Heaven 
knows  what  may  happen  to  us  as  things  are  going,  and 
the  heart  and  the  liver  may  some  day  start  imitating 
each  other,  but  when  they  do  there  will  be  a  dreadful 
physiological  chaos.  And  it  is  not  by  women  imitating 
man,  but  by  differing  from  him  as  widely  as  may  be, 
and  by  performing  wholly  different  functions  that 
the  line  of  real  biological  development  will  be  followed 
in  our  social  structure. 

Certainly,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  there 
is  any  connection  whatever  between  the  perfect 
symmetrical  State  and  woman's  position  in  it  as 
man's  political  equal.  On  the  contrary,  as  mankind 
itself  starts  the  differentiating  process  by  being  divided 
into  two  sexes  to  begin  with,  the  differentiation  of 
function  and  the  progress  from  the  simple  to  the 
complex,  seem  to  be  provided  for  only  by  further 
specialisations — which  in  fact  is  what  happens,  if  only 
we  let  well  alone.  But  the  mistake  of  the  whole  body 
of  Suffragism  may  be  seen  here  :  Suffragism  supposes 
that  man  and  woman  are  separate,  individual  units. 
They  are  not.  The  human  being  is  the  unit.  Man 
and  woman  are  only  the  beginning  of  that  differentia- 
tion of  function  which  points  out  to  us  clearly  enough, 
unless  we  shut  our  eyes  and  are  wilfully  blind,  in  what 
direction  true  development  lies,  that  direction  being, 
not  to  try  to  jumble  up  together  what  Nature  began  by 
separating,  but  by  taking  mankind  as  the  unit,  man 
and  woman  as  the  first  subdivisions,  and  then 
developing  each  sex  on  its  own  lines. 

We  had  to  chase  the  theorists  into  a  conception 
of  a  State  that  made  our  speculations  almost  "  void  for 
remoteness,"  in  trying  to  test  the  notion  that  as 
woman's  political  equality  with  man  is  essential  to 


WOMAN  AND  THE  STATE  i53 


the  symmetrical  State,  it  was  only  a  question  of  time 
whether  she  should  have  the  vote  now  or  next  century. 
And  I  have  tried  to  show  that  so  far  from  it  being 
I  merely  a  question  of  time,  it  is  a  question  simply  of 
I  keeping  to  the  right  track  or  going  off  the  track 
altogether.  But  we  can  lea|/e  theory  aside  and 
come  close  to  our  own  day  in  order  to  test  whether 
the  political  and  general  freedom  of  women  is 
inseparable  from  any  conception  of  ultimate  political 
development.  A  Russian  Suffragist,  speaking  to  her 
English  fellows  a  few  weeks  ago,  and  indignantly 
contrasting  our  backward  land  with  hers,  declared 
that  in  Russia  the  men  were  wholly  in  favour  of  the 
emancipation  of  women,  and  that  there  the  men 
and  women  were  political  comrades.  And  we  know 
ourselves,  indeed,  that  in  Russia  women  take  such 
an  equal  part  in  political  life  that  they  languish  in 
the  fortress  of  St.  Peter  and  Paul  and  perish  in  the 
snows  of  Siberia*  So  that  women  may  and  do  hold 
an  equal  position  with  men  in  a  State  whose  political 
development  has  not  yet  even  enfranchised  the  men, 
let  alone  developed  its  symmetry. 

The  United  States  is  not  comparable  with  Russia — 
in  most  things  it  is  in  advance,  and  in  one  or  two 
things  rather  worse  for  being  so.  In  several  of  the 
Western  and  undeveloped  P'ederal  States  Woman 
Suffrage  now  prevails,  but  all  through  the  States 
women  hold  a  position  of  freedom,  according  to  them- 
selves, and  to  the  most  prominent  American  Suffragists 
far  in  advance  of  any  other  race  of  women  on  earth.  I 
do  not  doubt  it,  but  what  does  it  prove  ?  In  the 
English  newspapers  of  November  21,  191 1,  there  is 
the  account  of  an  interview  with  Mrs  Leeds,  a  wealthy 
American  lady,  who  is  leaving  the  land  of  her  birth  for 
England — not  because  she  is  "  an  anglomaniac,"  as  she 
says,  but  because  she  finds  America  unendurable.  The 
men  there  are  what  women  make  them,  she  says,  and 
she  does  not  think  much  of  them.  And  as  for  the  women, 
her  opinion  of  them  is  implied  along  with  her  prefer- 
ence for  the  Englishman  over  her  own  countrymen  : 


154  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


"  I  confess  I  think  all  women  like  the  masterful  type  which  I 
find  among  Enghshmen.  I  sometimes  think  it  is  because 
American  men  lack  this  quality,  and  are  too  indulgent  to  their 
wives,  that  the  latter  tire  of  them  and  divorce  them." 

If  that  be  true — and  I  for  one  do  not  doubt  it  is — 

even  the  domestic  freedom  of  women  has  its  bad  side. 
But  although  the  American  woman  is  not  emancipated 
poHtically  throughout  all  the  States,  no  one  will  deny 
what  they  say  themselves,  that  they  are  freer  and  more 
independent  than  the  women  of  any  other  country. 
And  nowhere — except  in  the  fantastic  administration 
of  China — is  public  life  more  corrupt.  Indeed,  it  is  so 
corrupt  that  Mrs  Oilman,  the  most  prominent  Suffragist 
of  America,  apparently  believes  that  men  want  to 
keep  political  power  to  themselves  because  of  the  graft 
and  boodle  that  it  affords.  We  may  therefore  deduce 
from  these  contemporary  instances,  a  better  notion 
of  whether  the  conception  of  a  perfect  symmetrical 
State  is  inseparable  from  the  political  and  general 
freedom  of  women,  than  we  can  deduce  it  by  pursuing 
the  theorists  into  the  mists  beyond  our  ken. 

To  end  this  chapter  by  recalling  the  question  with 
which  it  opened,  there  is  no  clear  indication,  still  less 
any  certainty,  that  woman  would  bring  to  the  service 
of  the  State  any  gifts  that  would  justify  granting 
her  the  vote  as  an  act  of  grace,  and  outweigh  those 
prime  facts  and  considerations  which  forbid  it  to 
her  as  a  right. 

There  remains,  I  think,  only  one  main  question  to 
consider,  in  clearing  the  ground  for  the  final  and 
supreme  consideration  which,  apart  from  everything 
else  and  when  all  is  said  and  done,  governs  the  whole 
matter.  That  remaining  question  is  : — Does  the  fact 
that  political  power  is  confined  to  men  involve,  in 
truth  and  reality  and  not  rhetorically,  any  injustice  to 
woman?  And  that  question  has  two  branches:  (i) 
the  laws  affecting  woman  and  their  administration, 
and  (2)  the  economic  position  of  woman.  And  these 
two  branches  of  the  remaining  question  can  next 
be  considered  in  their  order. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


The  Woman  And  The  Law. 

THE  GROUNDS  OF  DIVORCE — THE  DUAL  CODE  OF 
MORALITY — EQUAL  LAW  —  THE  HEAD  OF  THE  HOME 
—  HUSBAND  AND  WIFE — WIFE  PROTECTION  AND 
MAINTENANCE  — FATHER  AND  CHILDREN, 


CHAPTER  XII. 


The  Woman  And  The  Law. 

Disregarding  minor  legal  grievances  which  are  cap- 
able of  receiving,  without  fuss  or  excitement,  the 
attention  they  may  deserve  (and  which  it  is  reasonable 
to  suppose  they  will  receive  from  a  Parliament  of  men, 
for  just  the  same  reason  that  a  Parliament  of  men  has 
considered  past  grievances  of  women  and  remedied 
them  by  man-made  laws) — disregarding  these  minor, 
disputable,  and  even  imaginary  grievances,  there  is  one 
outstanding  grievance  which  Suffragists  say  illustrates 
and  proves  the  inveterate  tendency  of  man  to  do  in- 
justice in  his  laws  to  woman.  That  grievance  is  the 
different  grounds  for  divorce  allowed  to  husband  and 
wife. 

The  Grounds  of  Divorce. 

If  a  husband  wishes  to  divorce  his  wife,  the  fact  of 
her  adultery  is  sufficient  ground  for  his  case.  But 
before  a  wife  can  divorce  her  husband,  she  must  prove 
that  he  has  been  cruel  as  well  as  unfa'thfu^ — though 
the  difference  is  more  apparent  than  real,  because  Ine 
courts  give  a  wide  interpretation  to  the  term  "cruelty." 
A  husband,  however,  has  me.ely  to  prove  that  his  wife 
has  been  unfaith'"'jl,  and  the  Suffragists  say  that  this 
distinction  is  a  survival  of  the  Eastern  notion  of  a 
wife's  status,  and  illu.strates  the  injustice  that  man 
perpetrates  aga'nst  woman  when  the  two  interests 
com.e  into  conflict. 

In  a  robustcr  age  Dr  Johnson  p.;t  into  pla-n  language 
the  difference  between  the  offence  of  infidelity  in  the 
husband  and  the  wife,  and  the  far-reaching  differences 
between  men  and  women  very  soon  touch,  naturally 
enough,  this  question.    The  potential  injury  to  the 

»57 


158  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


wife  of  a  husband's  infidelity  begins  and  ends  with 
the  wife  herself,  and  is  not  comparable  with  the  poten- 
tial injury  of  the  wife's  infidelity  to  the  husband  ; 
for  superadded  to  the  violation  of  the  marriage  vow, 
which  we  may  take  to  be  the  same  in  both  cases,  is 
the  stark  fact  that  a  man  might  work  and  lavish  his 
affection  upon  children  of  whom  his  worst  enemy 
might  be  the  father — of  whom,  indeed,  it  may  truly 
be  said  that  his  worst  enemy  must  be  the  father.  And 
a  more  poignant  human  wrong  can  hardly  be  con- 
ceived than  that. 

And  if  we  suppose  that  a  husband  does  not  remain 
in  ignorance  of  the  paternity  of  his  wife's  child,  but 
forgives  her  (as  has  been  done  by  men  either  of  a 
nobly  magnanimous  nature  or  of  a  strange  deficiency 
of  sensibility)  there  still  remains  a  large  distinction 
between  the  two  offences.  For  the  presence  of  the 
alien  child  in  his  household,  or  even  the  knowledge  of 
its  existence  outside  (though  unless  he  rebutted  his 
paternity  in  a  divorce  suit  he  would  still  be  responsible 
for  its  maintenance)  is  enough  to  perpetuate  through- 
out his  life  his  sense  of  the  wrong  done  him.  But  a 
husband's  infidelity  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
perpetrate  the  same  wrong  upon  the  wife.  In  the  one 
case,  the  child  may  be  born  and  reared  in  his  very 
home,  and  in  the  other  the  wife's  sense  of  injury  could 
hardly  come  home  to  her  with  the  same  acuteness  if 
she  knew  that  a  child  of  her  husband's  existed  else- 
where. A  celebrated  novelist  who  died  some  ten  years 
ago  lived  on  terms  of  the  greatest  affection  with  his 
wife  although,  to  her  knowledge  and  with  her  assent, 
he  was  the  parent  of  children,  denied  to  her,  by  a 
woman  whom  she  treated  with  all  respect  and  consider- 
ation—  though  it  is  not  a  menage  that  goes  well  with 
a  monogamous  system  of  marriage.  But  it  would  be 
almost  beyond  the  imagination  to  consider  a  husband 
occupying  that  position  of  acquiescence  towards  his 
wife  and  the  father  of  her  children — a  consideration 
that  belongs  to  another  set  of  differences  between  men 
and  women,  the  psychological  differences.    And  as 


THE  WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  159 


a  matter  of  fact  and  experience,  we  know  that 
ordinarily  a  wife  does  not  feel  it  so  difficult  to  forgive 
a  husband  for  infidelity  as  a  husband  finds  it  to  forgive 
a  wife,  and  the  very  root  meaning  of  the  word  adultery 
may  be  said  to  indicate  a  difference  not  only  in  degree 
but  in  kind. 

The  Dual  Code 
of  Morality. 

And  though  those  who  seek  to  regard  men  and 
women  as  identical  creatures  will  deny  it,  the  reason 
why  a  husband  finds  it  more  difficult  to  forgive  is  a 
very  simple  one,  considered  psychologically  and  not 
physiologically.  The  difference  may  thus  be  expressed : 
If  a  wife  is  unfaithful  to  her  husband  a  bigger  revolu- 
tion takes  place  in  her  moral  nature  than  may  take 
place  in  the  moral  nature  of  the  husband.  That,  too, 
may  be  denied,  but  it  is  nevertheless  true.  For  before 
a  woman — that  is,  a  self-respecting  woman  —  can  be 
unfaithful  to  her  husband,  her  husband  must  have  been 
displaced  entirely  in  her  affections  by  another  man. 
The  same  process,  it  is  true,  also  accounts  for  the 
infidelity  of  some  husbands.  A  husband  may  yield 
to  a  passion  for  another  woman  which  is  not  an  ignoble 
passion  at  all,  though  he  may  renounce  his  own  un- 
lawful happiness  because  of  his  sense  of  the  unfair- 
ness of  forcing  upon  his  wife  the  alternative  of  either 
separating  from  him,  with  all  the  cruelty  that  that 
would  involve  because  of  her  economic  dependence 
upon  him,  or  of  enduring  an  association  which  would 
otherwise  become  repugnant  to  her. 

But  that  is  not  the  commonest  kind  of  a  husband's 
infidelity.  A  learned  judge,  and  late  President  of  the 
Divorce  Division,  in  giving  evidence  before  the  Royal 
Commission  on  the  Divorce  Law  in  191 1,  spoke  of  the 
"accidental"  adultery  of  a  husband.  Probably  he  was 
misreported,  and  said  "  incidental " — a  word  which 
better  expresses  the  other  kind  of  adultery  of  which 
the  husband  is  most  frequently  guilty.  It  is  an  act 
of  bodily  unfaithfulness  to  his  wife  rather  than  of 


i6o  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


spiritual  unfaithfulness,  and  though  it  has  not  any 
spiritual  passion  for  its  object  to  redeem  or  extenuate 
it,  the  fact  is  that  it  causes  less  unhappiness  than  an 
infidelity  which  goes  deeper  in  his  nature,  for  incidental 
adultery  often  begins  and  ends  with  the  isolated 
incident  itself  The  husband  has  not  necessarily  lost 
either  his  respect  or  affection  for  his  wife,  and  though 
in  such  a  case  neither  the  respect  nor  the  affection  may 
be  very  deep,  his  infidelity  on  the  other  hand  does  not 
go  so  far  as  to  endanger  the  home.  But  a  wife  does 
not  abandon  herself  at  all  to  that  "  incidental  "  degree 
of  infidelity,  unless  she  is  really  an  abandoned  woman, 
and  a  wanton. 

The  view  of  dual  morality  implied  by  the  last  word 
outrages  many  people  whose  views  properly  command 
great  respect.  Nevertheless  it  is  borne  out  by  the 
experience  of  all  those  who  know  something  of  their 
fellow  men  and  women.  Those  whom  the  view  out- 
rages contend  that  the  dual  morality  which  social 
sanction  allows  to  men  and  women  is  wrong,  is  unjust 
to  the  woman  and  too  lenient  to  the  man.  It  may  be 
so,  though  before  that  were  admitted  it  would  be 
necessary  to  carry  the  question  a  little  further  than 
can  be  done  here.  But  some  indication  of  the  problem 
to  be  resolved  even  in  settling  that  point  may  be 
derived  from  considering  how  incidental  are  the 
functions  of  fatherhood  in  contrast  with  the  sustained 
burden  of  maternity.  Our  monogamous  system  of 
marriage,  in  fact,  imposes  a  restraint  upon  the  man, 
viewed  in  the  light  of  Nature's  intentions,  which  it 
does  not  impose  upon  the  woman.  Or,  to  put  the 
point  succinctly,  man  is  probably  a  polygamous  being, 
and  monogamous  marriage  keeps  the  birth-rate  down. 

Equal  Law. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  justify  a  different  code  of 
morality  for  the  sexes,  in  order  to  prove  that  in  any 
case,  whether  it  be  right  to  condone  it  or  not,  a  wife 
does  not  commit  "  incidental "  infidelity  as  a  husband 
may,  unless  she  has  the  nature  of  a  wanton.  But, 


THE  WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  i6i 


taking  her  as  a  normal  self-respecting  woman,  the 
act  of  infidelity  in  her  case  spreads  wider  mischief, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  marriage  state,  than  in 
that  of  the  man.  It  weakens  in  her  her  love  for  her 
children,  and  her  regard  for  the  home,  to  say  nothing 
of  her  love  for  her  husband.  She  is  undoubtedly 
stronger  to  resist  temptation  than  a  man  ;  for  either 
superior  morality,  as  I  believe,  or  merely  the  fear  of 
the  social  standard  of  dual  morality,  as  others  seem 
to  believe,  does  restrain  her  under  temptations  to 
which  a  man  (who  knows  that  so  far  as  he  is  con- 
cerned, he  is  not  putting  wife,  home  and  children  in 
the  melting  pot),  would  succumb.  But  when  she  does 
succumb  the  fall  is  greater.  She  burns  her  boats,  and 
husband,  home,  and  even  children  become  secondary 
to  her  infatuation  or  even  to  her  sincere  passion. 

And  so  the  wife's  infidelity  differs  from  the  husband's, 
in  degree  of  effect,  in  two  very  important  particulars  • 
she  does  a  potential  injury  to  him  which  he  cannot 
do  to  her,  and  she  brings  much  nearer  the  crisis  of  a 
disruption  in  the  home.  And  if  we  lived  in  times 
when  questions  were  weighed  and  sifted  with  dis- 
passionate penetration,  those  two  very  important 
distinctions  of  degree  between  the  infidelity  of  one 
and  of  the  other  might  suffice  to  leave  the  law  as 
it  stands.  But,  as  things  are,  it  is  very  likely  that 
the  change  will  be  made. 

The  practical  considerations,  in  any  case,  diminish 
the  importance  of  the  distinction.  For  if  a  woman 
desired  to  divorce  her  husband  for  a  single  act  of 
infidelity,  the  assumption  might  be  made  that  it  was 
desirable,  by  the  mere  fact  of  her  own  desire,  that 
the  union  should  be  dissolved.  For  either  she  would 
feel  the  wound  too  deeply  to  forgive  him  (a  sentiment 
which  in  itself  upholds  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage 
state),  or  she  would  welcome  the  opportunity  afforded 
her  to  end  a  union  otherwise  distasteful ;  and  as  in 
either  case  there  would  be  little  guarantee  of  future 
happiness,  the  union  might  just  as  well  be  dissolved. 
And  no  doubt  the  law  will  be  changed  so  as  to  allow 


i62  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


of  equal  rights  of  divorce,  on  the  ground  that  the  real 
and  simple  nature  of  the  offence  is  the  breach  of  the 
marriage  vow,  and  that  breach  should  be  sufficient  to 
entitle  either  party  to  relief.  I  have  gone  rather  fully 
into  this  matter  mainly  because  it  is  the  most  out- 
standing example  of  "unequal  laws"  made  by  man 
against  woman  to  which  Suffragists  point ;  but  also 
to  show  that  even  one  who  takes  what  is,  from  their 
standpoint,  the  extreme  man's  view,  is  prepared  to 
see  that  inequality  remedied. 

The  Head  of  the  Home. 

We  can  now  consider  how  the  law,  as  between 
husband  and  wife,  stands  generally.  And  I  think  it 
will  be  seen  that  unless  the  law  of  England  is  to 
deprive  a  husband  and  father  of  all  authority  and 
dignity,  and  reduce  him  to  the  position  of  inequality 
against  which  the  Suffragists  protest,  it  would  be 
dif¥icult  to  imagine  a  code  of  laws  that  gave  more 
protection  to  the  wife  consistent  with  the  view  that 
she  had  any  obligations  at  all  or  he  any  rights 
whatever. 

He  is  the  head  of  the  home  in  common  law — a  not 
unnatural  arrangement,  seeing  that  he  is  responsible 
for  it,  from  the  responsibility  of  its  upkeep  down  to 
the  responsibility  of  paying  the  fine,  if  his  wife  or 
her  servant  sets  the  chimney  on  fire.  Besides,  the 
common  law  of  England  does  not  take  the  Feminist 
view  of  the  unimportance  of  man.  And  even  in  a 
home  somebody  must  have  the  last  word  —  though  it 
is  certainly  not  the  husband  who  always  has  it.  And 
he  is  not  only  the  head  of  the  home,  but  he  can  decide 
where  the  home  shall  be — which  again  is  not  an  un- 
natural arrangement,  seeing  that  he  generally  provides 
the  home,  and  also  that  the  place  of  his  occupation 
generally  governs  the  place  of  his  residence.  And  if 
a  husband  could  not  decide  that  elementary  matter, 
then  the  wife  would  have  to  decide  it,  which  would  be 
an  injustice  against  the  husband  just  as  much  as  it  is 
now  contended  that  "arbitrary  power"  is  an  injustice 


THE  WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  163 


to  the  wife.  But  there  are  even  husbands  who  sacrifice 
their  business  and  personal  convenience  to  the  resi- 
dential wishes  of  their  wives,  just  as  there  are  wives 
who  will  not  allow  their  husbands  to  do  any  such 
thing.  In  other  words,  husband  and  wife  generally 
behave  like  reasonable  beings ;  and  in  those  cases 
where  they  do  not,  in  such  elementary  and  funda- 
mental matters  as  these,  then  the  husband  can  only 
fall  back  upon  his  common  law  rights  and  decide  for 
himself  how  far  his  own  self-respect  compels  him  to 
assert  them.  But  when  his  power  of  final  decision 
in  such  initial  matters  is  held  to  be  one  of  the 
tyrannies  of  the  present  marriage  state,  then  we  are 
obviously  approaching  a  time  when  the  cultivated 
animosities  of  human  nature  make  marriage  an  im- 
possible state,  at  any  rate  for  "  impossible  "  people. 

Husband  and  Wife. 

But  the  husband's  common  law  rights  in  other 
respects  have  been  greatly  modified  by  statute  law  ; 
and  in  considering  the  present  state  of  the  law  as 
between  husband  and  wife  it  will  be  best  to  contrast 
it  with  the  law,  as  stated  by  Mill,  when  he  was  inspired 
to  protest  that  a  wife  was  the  only  legal  slave  left 
in  England.  There  is  first  the  advantage  of  com- 
pressing the  subject  into  a  small  space ;  and  then 
the  greater  advantage  furnished  by  the  actual  contrast. 
For  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  consider  exhaustively 
whether  the  law  as  it  affects  women,  any  more  than  as 
it  affects  men,  is  capable  of  improvement.  We  are 
only  called  upon  to  consider  whether  the  law  as 
affecting  women  is  biassed  against  them  by  the  fact 
that  it  is  man-made.  Mill  not  only  said  it  was,  but 
that  no  alteration  was  to  be  looked  for  until  women 
had  the  vote.  And  so  we  may  limit  ourselves  to 
considering  the  legal  grievances  which  supplied  him 
with  the  material  for  his  main  argument,  and  then 
show  that  those  grievances  have  been  remedied  by 
legislature  and  justiciary  without  women  having  the 
vote. 


i64  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


"  Meanwhile  the  wife  is  the  actual  bond-servant  of 
her  husband  ;  no  less  so,  so  far  as  legal  obligation 
goes,  than  slaves  commonly  so  called."  So  Mill  wrote 
in  1869.  In  1912  a  husband  can  compel  his  wife  to 
do  nothing  except  to  cohabit  with  him.  But  he  can 
only  compel  her  to  do  that  negatively  ;  that  is,  by 
being  no  longer  responsible  for  her  maintenance  if 
she  declines  to  cohabit  with  him  without  just  cause  ; 
for  if  she  declined  to  cohabit  with  him  for  good  and 
sufficient  cause,  she  would  be  able  to  pledge  his  credit 
for  her  maintenance.  But  she  is  now  no  more  his 
bond-servant  than  he  is  hers — in  actual  practice, 
often  not  so  much.  He  cannot  compel  her  to  do 
even  her  "  domestic  duties."  If  she  wishes  to  take 
Miss  Cicely  Hamilton's  exalted  advice,  and  "  shirk 
them,"  she  may,  without  forfeiting  anything  more 
serious  and  valuable  than  her  husband's  respect. 
Many  wives,  indeed,  contrive  to  shirk  them  without 
forfeiting  even  that. 

"  She  can  acquire  no  property  but  for  him  ;  the 
instant  it  becomes  hers,  even  by  inheritance,  it  becomes 
ipso  facto  his."  So  wrote  Mill  in  1869.  In  1870 
was  passed  the  first  of  those  Married  Women's 
Property  Acts  which  now  allow  a  wife  to  own  anything 
and  everything  she  may  honestly  acquire,  to  her 
own  absolute  and  exclusive  use,  just  as  though  she 
had  no  husband,  and  were  herself  merely  a  man.  .'\nd 
even  when  Mill  wrote  he  did  not  make  sufficient 
allowance  for  that  extremely  important  principle  of 
"  separate  use,"  which  was  invented  and  acted  upon 
by  the  courts  of  equity  before  the  legislature  put 
the  principle  into  statute  law — a  principle  which 
invaded  very  successfully  indeed  the  husband's  rights 
over  his  wife's  property  at  common  law.  But  now 
he  has  absolutely  no  rights  whatever — what  is  hers 
is  her  own,  and  what  is  his  is  hers  to  the  extent  of 
her  proper  maintenance. 

Wife  Protection  and  Maintenance. 

**  No  amount  of  ill-usage,  without  adultery  super- 


THE  WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  165 


added,  will  in  England  free  a  wife  from  her  tormentor." 
So  wrote  Mill  in  1869.  In  1912  she  can  free  herself 
from  her  tormentor  if  she  merely  does  not  like  the 
sound  of  his  voice  or  objects  to  him  smoking  pipes. 
That  is  to  say,  she  can  leave  her  husband  whenever  she 
chooses  and  for  whatever  she  chooses,  with  good 
reason  or  for  no  reason  whatever,  and  Regina  v. 
Jackson  (1891)  settled  that  he  possesses  no  power 
to  force  her  back  to  him.  The  only  thing  she  cannot 
impose  upon  him  under  such  conditions  is  that  he 
should  maintain  her  for  the  rest  of  his  life  exactly 
as  though  she  were  a  loving  wife  who  had  not  left 
home,  for  no  husband  is  compelled  to  support  a  wife 
who  refuses  to  cohabit  with  him  without  just  cause. 
And  as  to  "  ill-usage,"  she  has  the  remedy  of  a  judicial 
separation  (equivalent  to  the  divorce  a  jnensd  et  thoro 
of  the  old  spiritual  courts),  if  (i)  he  has  been  convicted 
of  an  aggravated  assault  upon  her,  or  (2)  if  he  has  been 
guilty  of  persistent  cruelty  to  her.  (Summary  Juris- 
diction Act,  1895.)  She  can  also  obtain  her  order 
under  the  same  Act  if  her  husband  is  an  habitual 
drunkard,  and  seven  years  later,  remembering  the 
man's  side  to  such  a  case,  the  legislature  gave  the  same 
right  to  the  husband  (under  the  Licensing  Act  of 
1902).  And  she  can  also  obtain  her  judicial  separation 
if  he  "  has  been  guilty  of  wilful  neglect  to  provide 
reasonable  maintenance  for  her,  or  for  her  infant 
children,  whom  he  is  legally  bound  to  maintain, 
inclu  ling  illegitimate  children  of  the  wife  born  before 
marriage^  (Macqueen,  page  222.)  Moreover,  the 
court  of  summary  jurisdiction  may  not  only  grant  her 
the  separation,  but  the  custody  of  the  children  ;  and, 
further,  a  payment  for  maintenance  up  to  £2  a  week,  in 
default  of  paying  which  the  husband  may  be  comniltted 
to  prison.  And  it  has  been  held  that  the  courts  of 
summary  jurisdiction,  in  assessing  the  amount  that  a 
husband  may  be  ordered  to  pay  for  the  support  of  his 
wife,  should  be  guided  by  the  practice  by  which  alimony 
is  granted  in  ease  of  judicial  separation  by  the  High 
Court.    Consequently,  where  there  are  no  children 


166  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


of  the  marriage,  or  where  there  are  children  and  the 

wife  has  not  to  support  them,  "  she  should  be  allotted 
one  third  of  her  husband's  net  income."  It  is  needless 
to  say  that  if  a  husband  secures  a  judicial  separation 
from  his  wife,  she  is  under  no  obligation  to  work 
to  support  him.  Nor  has  she  any  liability  to  support 
his  and  her  children  unless  and  until  the  husband 
cannot  do  so  ;  but  the  husband  is  obliged  to  support, 
in  a  separation  under  this  Act,  not  only  his  own 
children,  but  any  children  she  may  have  by  a  former 
marriage  that  he  would  have  to  support  if  they  were  his 
own,  to  say  nothing  of  any  illegitimate  child  under 
sixteen  years  of  age  that  his  wife  may  have  had  before 
marriage.  The  fact  that  a  husband  has  to  support 
children  of  his  own  by  a  former  marriage  makes  no 
difference  to  the  alimony  allotted  by  the  court  to  his 
wife. 

If  a  husband  deserts  his  wife  he  is  deemed  "  an  idle 
and  disorderly  person,"  and  is  punishable  by  imprison- 
ment with  hard  labour.  No  wife  has  any  obligation  to 
maintain  her  husband  unless  he  becomes  chargeable  to 
the  parish  ;  and  only  then  is  she  liable  to  the  parish 
authorities  for  the  cost  of  his  maintenance  ;  but  even  so 
it  is  only  her  separate  estate  against  which  the  liability 
is  charged,  and  not  herself: — "In  consequence  of  the 
impersonal  character  of  the  only  judgment  obtainable 
against  a  married  woman — that  is,  against  her  separate 
estate,  and  not  against  her  person — an  attachment  of 
her  person  is  impossible."  (Macqueen.) 

A  man  is  liable  for  the  debts  of  the  woman  with 
whom  he  cohabits  if  he  allows  it  to  be  thought  she  is 
his  wife,  and  she  can  pledge  his  credit  as  a  wife  can  for 
necessaries  ;  and  necessaries  are  held  to  be  the  means 
of  living  in  accordance  with  the  husband's  position,  and 
also  to  include  the  wife's  costs  in  any  matrimonial 
action  she  brings  against  him  ;  and  even  if  a  man 
divorces  a  guilty  wife  he  must  pay  the  costs  properly 
incurred  by  her  for  her  defence.  A  person  who  has 
advanced  money  to  a  deserted  wife  for  necessaries  can 
recover  from  her  husband  ;  and  if  a  wife  separates  from 


THE  WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  167 


a  husband  for  any  cause  that  leaves  him  liable  for 
her  maintenance,  "  the  common  practice  of  advertising 
in  the  newspapers  '  that  he  will  not  be  responsible  for 
any  debts  she  may  contract,'  is  of  no  efficiency."  A 
widow  acts  as  administratrix  of  her  husband's  estate  if 
he  dies  intestate,  and  takes  one  third  of  his  estate  if 
there  are  children,  and  one  half  if  there  are  none.  A 
husband  is  not  bound  to  bequeath  any  of  his  property 
to  his  widow,  and  no  wife  with  a  separate  estate  is 
bound  to  leave  any  of  it  to  him.  Finally,  when  the 
husband  dies,  his  next-of-kin  are  responsible  for  his 
burial,  but  a  husband  is  bound  to  provide  for  his  wife's 
burial,  and  is  liable  to  any  stranger  who  has  paid  the 
expenses  of  her  funeral,  "  the  same  having  been 
suitable  to  the  rank  and  fortune  of  her  husband." 

Father  and  Children. 

"  They  are  by  law  his  children,"  wrote  Mill,  in  1869. 
"  He  alone  has  any  legal  right  over  them."  In  nothing 
is  the  law  more  tenacious  of  common  law  rights  than  in 
the  way  it  upholds  the  authority  of  the  father  over  his 
children,  but  even  that  "  sacred  right "  has  been 
modified  by  legislation,  and  the  courts  constantly 
deprive  fathers  of  the  custody  of  their  children.  "  The 
right  of  the  father  to  the  custody  and  control  of  his 
children  is  one  of  the  most  sacred  of  rights.  No 
doubt  the  law  may  take  from  him  this  right,  or  may 
interfere  with  his  exercise  of  it,  just  as  it  may  take 
away  his  life  or  his  property  or  his  liberty,  but  it  must 
be  for  some  sufficient  cause  known  to  the  law."  (Lord 
Justice  James,  in  re  Agar  Ellis,  1878.)  And  four  years 
only  after  Mill  wrote,  an  Act  was  passed  dealing  with 
the  custody  of  children,  the  object  of  which  was  that 
"  a  wife  might  be  at  liberty  to  assert  her  rights  as 
a  wife  without  the  risk  of  any  injury  being  done  to  her 
feelings  as  a  mother  " — that  is  to  say,  she  could  bring  a 
bad  husband  to  book  and  not  only  still  have  access  to 
her  children,  but  obtain  the  custody  of  them.  The 
Summary  Jurisdiction  Act  also  gives  this  comfort  and 
power  to  the  wife,  if  she  be  a  successful  applicant 


i68  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


for  a  separation.  "  Even  after  he  is  dead,"  wrote  Mill, 
'she  is  not  their  legal  guardian,  unless  he  by  will  has 
made  her  so."  That  was  not  true,  for  when  he  wrote 
it  had  b  decided  more  than  a  century  before  (Roach 
V.  Garvan)  that  in  the  absence  of  any  testamentary 
guardian  appointed  by  the  father,  the  mother,  on  his 
death,  became  the  guardian  "  by  nature  and  nurture  " — 
and  a  very  natural  state  of  affairs,  too.  But  no 
provision  seems  to  exist  enabling  a  mother  to  show 
cause  why  the  testamentary  guardian  appointed  by 
her  husband  should  not  be  appointed,  but  the  custody 
of  the  children  left  to  her.  Short  of  that  solitary  fact 
(though  he  did  not  specifically  call  attention  to  it  as  an 
omission)  the  whole  indictment  of  Mill  now  falls 
completely  to  the  ground.  And  if  so  much  has  been 
done  by  man-made  laws  to  protect  the  interests  of 
women,  without  their  having  the  vote,  in  all  reason 
we  may  suppose  that  the  same  motive  will  still  con- 
tinue to  influence  the  legislature  and  judiciary  of  men. 

Of  those  laws  lying  outside  the  relations  of  husband 
and  wife,  which  give  specific  protection  to  women  as 
against  men,  there  is  no  need  to  speak.  They  simply 
attest  the  root  difference  between  the  sexes,  protecting 
the  female  against  those  wrongful  acts  of  the  male 
which  she,  in  her  turn,  cannot  commit  against  him,  and 
which  therefore  exhibit  the  unilateral  arrangement 
of  Nature — exhibit,  that  is  to  say,  the  contrast  between 
the  activity  and  initiative  of  the  male  and  the  passivity 
and  receptivity  of  the  female.  Man  can  take  no  credit 
for  those  man-made  laws,  however,  except  in  so  far 
as  they  show  him  to  be  a  just  being,  wishful  to  do  his 
best  to  redress  by  his  own  system  of  laws  the  unequal 
balance  of  the  laws  of  Nature.  B"t  those  who  com- 
prehensively deny  the  significance  of  any  difference 
between  men  and  women  might  pay  some  little 
attention  to  the  extent  to  which  those  laws  of  Nature 
go,  tor  they  may  even  be  said  to  symbolise  the  relations 
between  men  and  women. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  show  that  woman  does 
not  need  the  vote  to  protect  her  interests  against  the 


THE  WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  169 


tyranny  of  man's  laws,  seeing  that  the  code  of  man- 
made  laws  as  a  London  Stipendiary  magistrate  (Mr 
Paul  Taylor)  said  recently,  "  are  all  in  favour  of  the 
wife."  But  it  is  not  only  the  law  we  have  to  consider. 
Its  administration  affords  as  good  an  index  of  his 
sense  of  justice.  For  instance,  in  law  there  is  an  equal 
right  on  the  part  of  men  and  women  to  sue  each  other 
for  breach  of  promise  of  marriage.  But,  as  we  know, 
that  law  is  interpreted  quite  differently  by  judge  and 
jury  when  man  is  the  suitor  than  when  a  woman  is  the 
plaintiff.  He  gets  nothing  but  ridicule  and  derision. 
She  gets  the  sympathy  of  the  jury  and  the  damages. 
But  as  the  question  of  man's  administration  of  the 
law  really  belongs  to  the  department  of  what  may 
be  comprehensively  called  "  chivalry " — we  will  let 
it  take  its  place  in  a  chapter  devoted  to  that  interesting 
aspect  of  man's  relation  to  woman. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


Chivalry  And  Martyrdom. 

JUSTICE  AND  CHIVALRY— "  THE  WEAKER  VESSEL"  — 
PUNISHMENT  OF  WOMAN.  AND  MAN — MAN'S  DEFER- 
ENCE TO  WOMAN— THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MILITANCY- 
ELECTIONEERING  VALUE  OF  MARTYRDOM— CHIVALRY 
AND  CONTROVERSY. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


Chivalry  And  Martyrdom. 

In  one  of  these  strange  street  disturbances  which  this 
movement  has  engendered — or  rather,  one  may 
almost  say,  which  have  engendered  the  movement 
as  it  exists  to-day — two  workmen  stood  on  the  edge  of 
a  crowd  watching  a  cordon  of  police  patiently  striving 
to  save  some  violent  women  from  damaging  either 
party  to  the  melee — themselves,  the  active  attackers, 
and  the  passive  resisters  drawn  up  in  a  line  near  a 
certain  official  residence. 

One  of  the  workmen — whose  trade  was  carried  on 
his  back,  for  he  was  a  sandwich  man — muttered  rather 
to  himself  than  for  general  consumption  the  sentiment: 
"  'Eroes !  'Eroes !  That's  what  I  calls  women  like 
that ! "  And  he  went  on  sucking  his  grimy  clay. 
"  'Eroes  !  "  said  the  man  next  to  him,  "  'Eroes  you  call 
'em,  do  yer?    You  just  try  the  same  monkey-tricks, 

and  see  the  sort  o'  bran  mash  they'd  well  make 

of  you  !  " 

Each  of  the  speakers  paid,  though  one  more  con- 
sciously and  more  sanely  than  the  other,  his  tribute  of 
chivalry  to  woman.  And  the  women  themselves, 
charging  furiously  at  the  harassed  policemen,  were 
really  admitting,  whether  they  knew  it  or  not,  that  the 
policemen  who  bore  insults  and  violence  that  would 
have  pleasantly  aroused  their  combative  masculine 
instincts  if  men  had  been  the  offenders,  were  also 
exhibiting  the  chivalry  of  man  towards  woman.  And 
the  whole  militant  campaign,  though  it  be  the  very 
insensate  extreme  of  a  movement  based  upon  a  denial 
of  the  justice  of  man  to  woman,  is  in  itself  a  witness 
to  the  fact  that  man  treats  woman  with  chivalrous 
respect.    It  will  be  time  to  prove  that  grotesque  irony 

173 


174  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


true  when  we  have  first  considered  some  examples 
of  man's  chivalry  to  woman  in  actual  daily  experience. 

And  the  first  place  to  look  for  them  is  in  man's 
behaviour  to  woman  in  his  public  capacity.  For, 
after  all,  the  chivalrous  respect  that  a  man  pays  to 
woman  in  social  and  private  life,  or  even  the  fact  that 
he  did  not  pay  it  at  all,  has  nothing  to  do  whatever 
with  the  Suffragists'  case.  If  it  were  proved  that 
so  far  as  man  in  the  State  were  concerned  he  was 
not  unfair  to  woman,  but  erred  on  her  side  rather 
than  against  her  ;  if  the  case  for  his  public  behaviour 
could  be  set  no  higher  than  that ;  and  if  in  his  social 
and  private  behaviour  to  woman  he  gave  her  no  more 
chivalrous  consideration  than,  say,  the  mistress  of 
a  household  ordinarily  gives  to  her  domestic  servant, 
the  Suffragist  case  that  man  is  unjust  to  woman  would 
still  be  defeated.  She  has,  on  her  own  showing,  no 
right  to  ask  for  any  respectful  consideration  whatever 
from  man  to  her  because  she  is  a  woman.  She  is  his 
equal,  his  rival,  a  struggle-for-lifer  like  himself.  In- 
deed, not  only  must  she  not  complain  if  man  treated 
her  with  no  more  respect  than  bare  good  manners, 
"  from  one  gentleman  to  another,"  as  they  say  in 
Clapham  ;  but  she  would  be  cutting  the  ground  from 
underneath  her  own  position  if  she  accepted  more  from 
him.  And,  to  do  Suffragists  justice,  some  of  them  are 
carrying  out  their  creed  to  its  logical  conclusion,  if 
I  may  judge  from  the  somewhat  ill-mannered  "  No 
thank  you  ! "  that  is  occasionally  snapped  out  when 
one  offers  the  commonplace  courtesy  of  one's  seat  in 
a  train.  And  the  logical  Feminist  has  the  courage 
(a  courage  which  even  the  Anti-suffragist  may  respect) 
to  disdain  and  disown  the  illogical  Suffragist's  attitude 
in  complaining  that  woman  does  not  get  that  chivalry 
which  it  is  the  very  essence  of  her  creed  to  say  is  the 
sign  and  symbol  of  woman's  "  subjection." 

But,  at  any  rate,  I  am  under  no  obligation  whatever 
to  prove  that  men  behave  with  any  chivalrous  respect 
to  women  in  private  and  social  life.  All  that  it  is 
necessary  to  show  to  rebut  the  Suffragist  position,  is 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  i75 


that  in  those  public  affairs  within  the  control  of  men 
they  do  no  injustice  to  woman  but  give  her  a  bare 
preferential  consideration. 

Justice  and  Chivalry. 

Well,  there  is  no  place  like  the  courts  of  justice  for 
discovering  how  things  stand  in  this  matter.  And 
there  the  evidence  is  overwhelming  that  women  are 
treated  not  only  with  a  bare  preferential  consideration, 
but  with  a  leniency  and  indulgence  that  man  does  not 
mete  out  to  his  own  sex — indeed,  if  he  carried  leniency 
and  indulgence  so  far  for  his  own  sex,  he  would  think 
he  was  defeating  the  very  ends  of  justice.  If  you  ask 
me  to  adduce  the  evidence  that  man  so  treats  woman, 
where  am  I  to  begin  and  where  am  I  to  end  ?  How, 
indeed,  can  one  give  evidence  at  all  of  a  fact  so 
notorious,  so  naturally  received,  so  much  the  expected 
thing,  that  one  only  realises  it  is  the  rule  by  some 
occasional  breach  that  creates  comment  or  stirs  one's 
indignation  ?  I  have  attended  criminal  and  civil  courts 
during  twenty  years,  and  the  actual  instances  of  the 
judges'  consideration  for  women  have  dropped  from 
my  memory  only  because  they  were  too  common  to 
make  any  durable  impression. 

The  judges  of  the  English  High  Court  are,  I  suppose 
no  one  will  deny,  the  most  eminent  administrators  of 
the  law  in  the  world  ;  and  I  have  seen  them  all  in  the 
judgment  seat,  except  those  appointed  within  the  last 
few  years.  But  even  those  who  had  a  reputation  for 
severity — "  hanging  judges  "  and  "  terrors  "  for  certain 
classes  of  crime — always  touched  their  judgment  with 
some  compassion,  and  loosened  the  strings  of  mercy, 
when  they  were  dealing  with  any  woman  short  of  one 
whose  crime  was  so  revolting  as  to  make  men  in- 
stinctively say,  "  Lucky  thing  for  her  she  hasn't  a  judge 
and  jury  of  women  to  deal  with  !  "  And  yet  these 
same  judges,  dealing  with  men  charged  with  crimes 
against  women,  were  implacably  and  sometimes  even 
cruelly  severe.  But,  of  course,  it  would  almost  be 
stooping  to  imbecility  to  try  and  prove  by  actual 


176  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


instances  the  truth  of  something  so  notorious  as  that, 
in  the  administration  of  the  law,  judges  always  import 
into  justice  some  of  that  consideration  for  womanhood 
which  still,  we  may  be  thankful,  marks  man's  attitude 
to  woman  amongst  every  class  and  degree  of  English- 
man— systematic  wife-beaters  excepted,  though  they, 
thanks  to  the  discouragement  which  they  receive  from 
summary  jurisdiction,  are  a  dwindling  band,  the  last 
upholders  of  the  tradition  that  man  is  a  brute  to 
woman, 

"The  Weaker  Vessel." 

But,  to  give  some  concrete  instances  of  man's  judicial 
attitude  to  woman,  let  me  take  first  a  case  which  came 
before  the  Courts  long  enough  ago  for  one  to  be  able 
to  recall  it  now  without  recalling  the  case  to  the 
public  memory.  It  was  notable  for  the  fact  that  the 
petitioner  was  a  young  woman  who  had,  after  a  rash 
and  impulsive  adventure  that  ended  in  an  unfortunate 
marriage,  committed  adultery ;  and  this  guilt  on  her 
part,  brought  to  the  notice  of  the  Court  by  the  King's 
Proctor,  barred  her  from  the  relief  she  had  sought  and 
obtained,  unless  the  judge  exercised  the  discretion 
which  is  left  to  him  in  such  cases,  and  made  the 
decree  nisi  absolute.  It  is  a  discretion  sparingly 
exercised  in  exculpation,  and  in  this  case  one  can 
only  say  that  it  was  exercised  very  generously  indeed. 
But  what  the  judge  said  is  more  important  than  what 
he  did.  I  quote  from  the  report  in  The  Westminster 
Gazette  on  the  day  of  his  decision  : 

"The  petitioner  was  charged  with  misconduct,  which  she 
denied,  but  the  jury  had  not  believed  her.  He  quite  agreed  with 
the  jury,  who  could  have  come  to  no  other  conclusion.  There- 
fore they  had  a  case  where  the  petitioner  not  only  had  been 
guilty  of  misconduct  but,  in  her  denial  of  misconduct,  had  com- 
mitted perjury.  The  question  was,  what  had  he  to  do  with  the 
matter  under  his  powers  of  discretion?  Some  people,  said  his 
lordship,  were  foolish  enough  to  think  that  a  woman  and  a  man 
should  be  treated  the  same.  This  Court  never  had  done  so,  and 
he  hoped  never  would  hold  that  a  woman  was  not  the  weaker 
vessel.  Her  constitution  and  habit  of  thought  and  feminine 
weakness  might  lead  her  to  do  things  which  might  be  excusable 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  i77 


in  her,  although  the  same  conduct  might  not  be  excusable  in  a 
man." 

And  so  the  judge  exercised  his  discretion  in  favour 
of  the  petitioner,  reproving  her  for  her  perjury,  but 
adding  that  it  was  always  better  for  people  to  deal 
frankly  with  the  Court,  "  for  this  Court  is  always  ready 
to  recognise  the  weakness  of  the  sex  in  certain 
matters." 

Well,  I  am  not  concerned  to  say  whether  I  agree 
with  everything  the  judge  said,  or  to  enquire  whether 
it  is  quite  discreet  for  a  judge  of  the  Divorce  Court  to 
declare  so  uncompromisingly  that  woman  is  "the 
weaker  vessel "  in  that  particular  department  of  human 
frailty  over  which  he  judicially  presides.  But  could  a 
better  illustration  be  found  of  the  treatment  meted  out 
to  woman  by  man  in  his  public  and  judicial  capacity  ? 
And  could  we  have  a  better  instance  to  prove  that  sex 
carries  its  differences  even  into  the  sphere  of  justice, 
than  this  recognition  of  woman's  "  constitution  and 
habits  of  thought  and  feminine  weakness  ?  "  Could  we 
also  have  a  clearer  proof  that  though  men  contend  that 
woman's  "  constitution  and  habits  of  thought  and 
feminine  weakness"  debar  her  from  certain  spheres  and 
activities  of  life,  they  are  nevertheless  even  pleaded  by 
man  himself,  in  her  interest  and  for  her  benefit,  when  he 
sits  in  judgment  upon  her  ? 

And  only  the  day  before  that  judgment  was  pro- 
nounced, a  very  different  case  came  before  the  House 
of  Lords  and  a  very  different  treatment  was  meted  out, 
again,  to  the  man  concerned  than  to  the  woman.  It 
was  a  case  into  which  there  is  no  need  to  enter  beyond 
saying  that  the  prisoners  were  sister  and  brother,  and 
that  the  House  of  Lords  had  to  decide  the  unique  case 
of  whether  it  could  restore  a  conviction  that  had  been 
quashed  by  the  Court  of  Criminal  Appeal.  It  was  a  case 
in  which  the  equality  of  the  guilt  could  not  be  question- 
ed, but  in  restoring  the  conviction,  the  House  of  Lords 
sentenced  the  man  to  three  years'  penal  servitude  and 
the  woman  to  six  months'  imprisonment  in  the  second 
division  :  a  distinction  in  punishment  infinitely  greater 


178  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


than  any  possible  difference  in  the  offence  could  have 
been,  short  of  such  a  difference  as  would  have  made  the 
woman  not  the  co-prisoner  she  was,  but  the  com- 
plainant, which  she  was  not. 

I  think  these  two  instances  are  quite  sufficient  to 
bring  in  support  of  a  truth  so  notorious  that  it  is  in  the 
very  bone  and  fibre  of  commonplace  experience — the 
truth  that  man,  so  far  from  denying  justice  to  women, 
judicially  and  publicly,  renders  to  her  something  that  a 
sexless  justice  could  not  grant. 

Punishment  of 
Woman  and  Man. 

But  before  we  leave  this  part  of  the  subject,  let  me 
try  to  bring  it  right  down  to  date.  And  I  cannot  do 
that  in  a  fairer  or  better  way  than  to  reach  out  my 
hand  for  the  newspaper  of  the  day  on  which  I  write, 
and  see  what  that  has  to  tell  us,  in  the  judicial  reports, 
of  the  different  treatment  accorded  by  judges  to  men 
and  women  offenders. 

One  case  upon  which  my  eye  immediately  lights 
is  that  of  a  woman  charged  with  cruelly  ill-treating  her 
own  son,  a  "  weak-minded  lad  of  thirteen."  "  A  neigh- 
bour spoke  to  hearing  the  child  screaming  in  the  night 
and  to  finding  him  naked  in  the  rain  and  covered  with 
weals  and  bruises.  She  had  never  seen  such  marks  on 
a  child."  The  presiding  magistrate  "characterised  the 
offence  as  shameful  and  inhuman.  The  defendant,  he 
said,  was  a  vile  and  vicious  woman.  A  fine  of  £^  and 
costs  was  imposed,  or  a  month's  imprisonment."  As 
there  is  no  other  case  recorded  in  the  paper  in  which 
the  man's  offence  is  on  all  fours  with  that,  or  anything 
like  it,  I  cannot  put  it  in  parallel  columns,  but  I  very 
much  doubt  whether,  if  the  father  of  the  lad  had  been 
charged  with  the  same  offence  and  the  same  cruelty 
proved,  he  would  have  got  off  with  anything  like  so 
inadequate  a  sentence.  The  other  cases,  however,  are 
better  put  in  parallel  columns  and  left  entirely  to  tell 
their  own  tale. 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  i79 


MEN, 

At  the  Kent  Assizes,  at  Maid- 
stone, George   

pleaded  guilty  to  obtaining  by 
fraud  money  from  three  resi- 
dents of  Whitstable.  He  had 
deluded  various  women  by 
marrying  them  bigamously, 
and  obtaining  money  from 
them,  and  had  been  sentenced 
on  two  counts  to  three  years' 
and  five  years'  penal  servitude. 
These  offences  were  now  re- 
called against  hiin,  and  the 
prisoner  was  sentenced  to  four 
years'  penal  servitude  in  addi- 
tion to  the  two  unexpired  years 
of  his  previous  sentence. 


WOMEN. 
At  the  Kent  (the  same)  Assizes 

a  young  woman  named  

 pleaded    guiliy  to  a 

charge  of  attempting  to  drown 
her  two  -  year  -  old  child.  For 
the  defence  it  was  stated  that 
the  prisoner  became  engaged 
to  a  respectable  man  shortly 
before  she  committed  the 
offence.  The  man  was  not  the 
father  of  the  child,  but  knew  all 
about  the  prisoner's  history. 
They  decided  not  to  marry 
until  the  case  had  been  dealt 
with.  The  prisoner  was  bound 
over  and  discharged. 


At  the  Glamorgan  Assizes  Mr 
Justice  Lawrence  passed  sen- 
tences ranging  from  three 
months'  to  twelve  months' 
hard  labour  on  the  prisoners 
found  guilty  in  connection  with 
the  strike  riots  in  Rhondda 
Valley.  Twenty-one  prisoners 
were  sentenced  in  all.  Sen- 
tencing the  ringleadeis,  the 
judge  said:  "  Somebody  must 
have  the  courage  to  prevent 
this  state  of  things  going  on, 
and  each  of  you  must  be  sent 
to  prison  for  12  months'  hard 
labour." 


At  Bow  Street  a  second 
batch  of  "Suffragette"  priso- 
ners were  dealt  with  for  the 
damage  to  property  com- 
mitted bv  them  during  their 
demonstration  two  days  be- 
fore. The  following  traders 
were  mentioned  as  having 
suffered  damage :  Grand 
Hotel  Buildings,  j^ioo  ;  Swan 
and  Edgar,  £,20 ;  Hippell, 
chemist,  ^35  ;  Fendick  and 
Co.,  tailors,  ;^8o.  Penalties 
varied  from  los  to  40s,  accord 
ing  to  the  amount  of  damage 
done  and  the  "  record  "against 
the  defendants.  "  Mrs  Pe- 
thick  Lawrence,  the  leader  of 
the  demonstration,"  charged 
with  assaulting  a  constable, 
was  sentenced  to  a  month's 
imprisonment  in  the  second 
division  (against  which  decision 
she  appealed).  ^ 

'  After  the  window-smashing  raid,  on  a  much  larger  scale,  of 
March,  1912,  the  magistrates  deemed  it  their  duty  to  add  hard 
labour  to  the  sentences  on  the  offenders.  But  the  distinction 
made  between  the  sexes  in  the  administration  of  justice  pursues 
us  even  in  the  Prison  Regulations,  for  the  schedule  of  hard 
labour  for  women  prisoners  is  much  less  severe  than  that  for 
male  prisoners. 


i8o  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Man's  Deference  to  Woman, 

Now,  I  am  not  going  to  waste  my  time  in  proving 
that  in  social  life  men  treat  women,  in  the  mass,  with 
the  same  chivalrous  sort  of  consideration  as  in  the 
public  sphere.  Those  who  believe  it  is  so  will  require 
no  proof  of  a  fact  which  their  own  daily  experience 
attests,  in  the  home,  in  the  street,  and  wherever  men 
and  women  meet.  And  the  only  people  who  deny  it 
are  those  who  say  that  they  do  not  want  any  prefer- 
ential treatment  from  men,  and  whose  whole  case  of 
"  equality  for  the  sexes  "  excludes  it  altogether.  And 
yet  even  when  they  deny  that  men  are  chivalrous,  a 
note  of  indignation  creeps  into  their  voices — so  in- 
grained even  in  the  breasts  of  those  who  repudiate 
chivalry  is  the  recognition  of  it.  A  typical  utterance 
is  that  of  Mrs  Zangwill : — "  Men  have  never  shown  any 
chivalry  to  women,  except  perhaps  to  a  few  pretty 
women  of  the  middle  class."  Well,  sweeping  mis- 
statements of  that  kind  are  really  not  worth  pursuing. 
Every  mother's  son  contradicts  that  one — for  how  else 
can  be  explained  that  tender  deference  which  a  son 
pays  to  his  mother  in  contrast  with  the  more  assertive 
obedience  which  he  pays  to  his  father  ? 

But  the  existence  of  chivalrous  feeling  towards 
women  is  not  only  denied,  but  the  sentiment  itself  is 
even  derided.  And  that  I  cannot  understand,  for  even 
if  it  be  a  mistaken  notion  on  man's  part  that  he  is 
chivalrous  to  women,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  the 
sentiment  should  be  derided,  though  its  practice  were 
merely  an  illusion. 

But  the  odd  thing — one  of  a  thousand  odd  things 
in  an  amazing  tangle  of  contradictions  and  absurdities 
— is  that  the  Suffragists  themselves  admit  the  existence 
of  a  considerate  attitude  on  the  part  of  men  for  which 
there  is  no  better  or  shorter  name  than  chivalry.  They 
admit  it  despite  themselves.  Just  as  Mill  claimed  on 
the  one  hand  that  women  were  the  equals  of  men 
in  intelligence  when  he  wanted  to  prove  their  fitness 
for  the  franchise,  but  pictured  them  all  as  a  brainless 
lot  when  he  wanted  to  show  the  defects  of  their 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  i8r 


"  narrow  "  education,  so  the  Suffragists  are  constantly 
driven  to  admit  that  very  chivalry  which  they  deny 
and  deride.  Miss  Cicely  Hamilton,  for  instance,  wish- 
ing to  prove  the  fantastic  doctrine  that  women  acquire 
their  bad  manners  in  the  home,  and  would  acquire 
better  manners  if  they  went  out  into  the  world  of  com- 
merce, is  driven  to  make  the  admission  that  men  are 
considerate  to  women  ;  for  the  two  choses  vues  she 
selects  are  that  of  ill-mannered  women  —  one  blocking 
a  booking-office  window  and  the  other  taking  a  large 
and  unpleasant  dog  into  a  'bus — testing  the  manners 
and  patience  of  men  in  a  way  and  to  an  extent  that  we 
may  suppose  would  not  have  been  the  case  if  each  had 
not  been,  as  Miss  Hamilton  put  it,  "  what  is  usually 
termed  a  lady." 

But  if  we  want  to  discover  the  strongest  admission 
of  this  chivalry  in  men,  we  shall  discover  it  in  that 
word-defying  movement  of  militancy.  It  is  difficult, 
perhaps,  in  a  book  dealing  with  this  question  of  Votes 
for  Women  to  avoid  saying  a  good  deal  about  the 
militant  movement,  as  an  auxiliary  of  propaganda. 
Nevertheless,  one  can  do  difficult  things  if  one  tries, 
and  of  the  militant  movement  I  will  merely  say  that  I 
have  nothing  to  say  beyond  the  statement  that  nothing 
I  could  say  would  have  any  real  quantitative  relation  to 
what  might  be  said.  The  militant  movement  stands 
by  itself.  One  can  only  say  of  it  that  in  this  strange 
world  strange  things  happen,  and  the  militant  move- 
ment is  one  of  them.  Marvelling  and  saddened,  but 
admitting  that  it  certainly  has  made  the  Suffrage  a 
"  live  "  question    we  can  only  pass  on. 

'  Those  who  wish  to  know  something  of  the  militant  move- 
ment from  the  inside  may  read  Mrs  Billington-Greig's  book  on 
that  subject  with  the  sub-title  "  Emancipation  in  a  Hurry."  Mrs 
Billington-Greig  charges  the  leaders  of  that  movement  with 
betraying  the  cause  ;  and  the  decision  announced  in  the  middle 
of  January  1912  to  resume  militant  tactics  against  the  Govern- 
ment unless  it  will  itself  press  a  Woman  Suffrage  Measure  through 
the  House  enables  us  to  understand  Mrs  Billington-Greig's  point 
of  view.  For  if  Woman  Suffrage  ever  had  a  chance  of  becoming 
law,  it  is  in  this  Parliament,  but  if  the  Government  were,  or 
could  be  driven  to  the  choice  of  taking  up  the  responsibility  or 


I 


i82  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


The  Psychology  of  Militancy. 

But  of  its  relation  to  this  question  of  chivalry  it 
is  possible  to  say  something,  for  here  the  resources 
ot  one's  language  are  adequate,  as  nothing  more  is 
needed  than  to  point  out  what  is  really  obvious.  And 
the  obvious  thing  about  the  militant  movement  is  that 
it  is  itself  a  wonderful  tribute  to  man's  chivalry  towards 
woman.  For  the  psychological  process  of  its  devotees 
is  summed  up  entirely  in  the  words  and  actions  of  the 
henpecking  wife  who,  slapping  her  husband  in  the  face, 
said,  "  There,  you  big  bully !  Why  don't  you  hit  me 
back,  you  coward  !  "  The  tactics  of  the  movement,  in 
short,  are  so  to  embarrass  the  guardians  of  law  and 
order  that  they  shall  be  faced  with  one  of  two  dis- 
agreeable alternatives  : — either  to  give  up  maintaining 
law  and  order,  or  to  maintain  it  only  by  incurring  the 
odium  of  treating  women  exactly  as  men  would  be 
treated  under  precisely  the  same  circumstances.  If 
any  bigger  acknowledgement  could  be  made  of  man's 
treatment  of  woman  than  that,  I  should  be  very  pleased 
to  receive  it. 

There  is  no  need  to  prove  the  case.  It  can  be 
gathered  from  the  newspaper  files.  A  prominent 
militant  has,  indeed,  obligingly  collected  all  the 
evidence  that  is  necessary  upon  the  point  in  a  book 

going  out  of  office,  it  would  certainly  go  out  of  office,  we  should 
have  a  general  election  with  Woman  Suffrage  as  the  prime  issue, 
and  votes  for  women  would  have  to  wait  until  there  was  a 
majority  in  Parliament  specifically  returned  to  carry  it.  There- 
fore, unless  there  is  somethinjj  profound  in  these  tactics  that  the 
masculine  mind  cannot  fathom,  it  looks  rather  as  though  the 
militants  wished  to  postpone  that  achievement  of  their  cause 
which  would,  by  its  very  success,  render  the  continuance  of  the 
organisations  now  existing  to  attain  it  unnecessary.  A  Govern- 
ment, by  the  way,  returned  to  carry  Woman  Suffrage  would  have 
nothing  else  to  do,  for  Mr  Lloyd  George  and  Mr  Balfour  would 
be  colleagues.  A  Government  returned  to  kill  Woman  Suflfrage 
could  do  nothing  at  all,  for  Mr  Asquith  and  Mr  M'Kenna  and 
Mr  Austin  Chamberlain  and  Mr  F.  E.  Smith  would  sit  looking 
helplessly  at  Mr  Balfour,  Mr  Bonar  Law,  Mr  Lloyd  George  and 
Sir  Edward  Grey.  It  is  this  consideration  which  makes  the 
iproposal  for  a  Referendum  so  eminently  sane. 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  ^^3 


in  which  the  exploits  of  militancy  are  chronicled  with 
pride.  But  taking  only  the  very  last  ebullition  of 
militancy  up  to  the  time  of  writing,  two  or  three 
incidents  of  that  window-smashing  orgie  may  be 
extracted  from  the  newspaper  accounts  of  that  even- 
ing's diversion,  and  I  take  them  from  one  single 
newspaper. 

"To  their  credit  it  must  be  said  that  the  police  were  thoroughly 
good  humoured,  'Now,  Mrs  Pethick  Lawrence,'  they  would 
say,  as  though  remonstrating  with  her  mildly,  for  all  the  trouble 
she  was  giving.  Obviously  the  police  were  very  loth  to  take  her 
into  custody,  but  at  last  the  Inspector  gave  the  word.  'We 
must  take  her  in,'  he  said. — Daily  Chronicle,  Nov.  22,  191 1." 

That  incident  needs  no  comment — it  straightfor- 
wardly proves  the  point.  The  next  incident  is  slightly 
more  complex,  but  the  same  truth  emerges  : 

"  Thwarted  by  the  mounted  police  in  their  attempt  to  break  the 
line  they  seized  the  bridles  of  the  horses  and  clung  to  them  des- 
perately. I  saw  one  officer  trying  in  vain  to  unclasp  the  little 
hand  that  claspedhis  horse's  bit,  and  the  crowd  howled  as  he 
made  his  horse  plunge  so  that  the  woman  was  in  grave  danger  of 
injury.  This  perilous  device  was  tried  by  several  women,  and  as 
a  result  the  operations  of  the  police  were  much  hampered.  It 
was  only  the  strength  of  a  number  of  unmounted  policemen  who 
could  release  the  bridles  from  the  grip  of  those  women's  hands." 

The  "  howling  crowd  "  did  not  apparently  appreciate 
the  difficult  task  of  the  police,  nor  grasp  the  fact  that 
militancy  is  designed  merely  to  thrust  upon  the  police, 
as  I  have  said,  an  odious  alternative.  But  the  crowd 
did  howl  at  police  who,  if  they  had  been  dealing  with 
the  crowd,  would  have  loosened  the  hands  on  their 
horses'  bridles,  not  by  trying  to  unclasp  the  hands,  but 
by  attacking  the  seat  of  the  will  that  kept  the  hands 
there — that  is,  by  cracking  their  heads.  P'or  policemen 
do  not  deal  very  gently  with  riotous  men  who  lay 
hold  of  their  horses'  bridles.  But  even  the  "  howling 
crowd  "  attested  the  chivalry  of  man  towards  woman. 

The  next  instance  is  also  a  straightforward  proof 
of  my  contention  : 

"One  painful  incident  happened  and  aroused  some  feeling  in 
the  crowd.    It  wa«  the  arrest  of  Miss  ,  one  of  the  most 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


notable  figures  in  the  Suffrage  movement.  She  is  a  cripple,  and 
in  all  the  raids  has  been  familiar  in  her  hand-driven  cycle  chair. 
She  wheeled  this  indomitably  against  the  lines  of  the  police  until 
their  patience  was  exhausted,  and,  lifted  bodily  up  by  two  in- 
spectors and  seven  constables,  she  was  carried  into  Cannon  Row 
Police  Station." 

Now,  I  suppose  I  need  not  strive  to  prove  to  any 
intelligence  that  the  crippled  militant  was  there  not 
because  of  her  militant  capacity,  but  because  of  her 
crippled  incapacity.  She  was  there,  in  short,  not  to 
awe  or  overpower  the  police,  but  merely  to  enhance 
the  odium  of  the  alternative  I  have  spoken  of.  She 
was  brought  into  the  firing  line,  we  may  almost  say, 
in  the  hope  that  she  would  be  hurt,  but  certainly  with 
the  intention  to  represent  the  police  as  ruffians  if  they 
even  accidentally  hurt  her.  The  plan,  however,  appar- 
ently provides  for  no  such  compromise  as  that  which 
the  police  adopted,  in  merely  detaching  a  number  of 
their  body,  as  another  account  says,  "  to  take  her  out 
of  harm's  way." ' 

Of  course,  I  have  been  pointing  out  and  proving  the 

'  The  perfect  reduciio  ad  absurdum  of  this  matter  has  been 
accomplished  by  Mr  F.  T.  Jane,  the  well-known  writer  on  military 
topics.  A  proposal  was  made  by  several  ladies  that  the  work  of 
national  defence  should  be  served  by  raising  a  few  regiments  of 
women  to  shame  the  men.  It  was  pointed  out  that  with  a 
modern  rifle  a  woman  might  do  very  good  shooting,  and  war 
was  imagined  as  a  sort  of  picnic  in  which  ladies  could  be  motored 
to  the  scene  of  action,  find  a  marquee  erected  for  lunch,  and  the 
enemy  waiting  obligingly  until  lunch  was  over.  No  idea  that 
war  is  unlike  a  shooting-party  marked  the  suggestion.  Mr  Jane 
then  seriously  comments  :  "  Any  expeditionary  force  we  might 
employ  would  be  heavily  depleted  by  the  necessity  of  a  home 
garrison  left  to  deal  with  possible  rioters.  Here  .the  women 
regiments  would  be  useful.  Even  the  worst  of  hooligans  would 
hesitate  at  organised  bottle-throwing  at  women  ;  or,  if  any 
such  throwing  took  place,  public  opinion  would  take  a  stronger 
view  than  it  has  done  when  male  soldiers  and  policemen  were 
the  target  .  .  .  and  the  most  virulent  of  M.P.'s  would  hardly  dare 
to  justify  attacks  upon  women  seeking  to  preserve  law  and 
order." — The  Standard,  Oct.  6,  191 1.  Mr  Jane  adds:  "Thus 
the  whole  vexed  question  of  Votes  for  Women  would  be  auto- 
matically solved."  Tiie  subtlety  of  no  opponent  is  so  deadly  as 
this  charming  ingenuousness  of  Mr  Jane. 


CHIVALBY  AND  MARTYRDOM  185 


glaringly  obvious  thing  in  showing  that  not  only  is 
Suffragist  militancy  a  recognition  of  the  preferential 
treatment  that  man  accords  to  woman,  but  that  its 
very  object  is  to  take  advantage  of  it,  although  the 
"  equality  of  the  sexes  "  creed  actually  relieves  man 
of  this  obligation  ;  whilst  if  that  obligation  be  modified 
or  abrogated,  under  stress  of  the  very  circumstances 
that  are  intended  to  provoke  its  abrogation,  he  is  held 
up  to  opprobrium  for  brutal  behaviour  to  women. 
And  so  the  involutions  of  topsy-turvydom  go  on 
until  it  requires  a  real  effort  of  the  mind  to  pursue 
Absurdity  through  the  mazes  of  Heaven-knows-what« 
to-call-it. 

But  unfortunately  so  many  people  fail  to  see  the 
obvious — witness  the  crowds  who  howled — that  now- 
adays the  task  of  anybody  taking  part  in  public 
affairs  is  not  to  be  profound  and  to  think  deeply  so 
much  as  to  think  clearly  and  speak  plainly.  It  is,  in 
fact,  rather  in  the  correction  of  fundamental  error  than 
in  the  pursuit  of  ultimate  truth  that  the  energies  of  the 
mind  are  taxed  in  these  democratic  days.  And  that 
is  why  some  special  words  must  be  devoted  to  that 
active  phase  of  militancy  which,  in  its  passive  aspect, 
was  known  as  "  forcible  feeding."  For  I  have  known 
otherwise  intelligent  people  who  did  not  spare  their 
intelligence  in  general  condemnation  of  militancy 
surrender  their  intelligence  altogether  upon  the  ques- 
tion of  the  "forcible  feeding"  of  women  prisoners. 
Though,  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  heard  of  instances 
of  sympathisers  whose  sympathy  for  the  cause  has 
been  weakened  by  that  phase  of  militancy,  for  as 
parents  of  theirs,  as  surgeons  in  his  Majesty's  prisons, 
had  been  forcibly  feeding  male  prisoners,  at  every 
meal-time,  for  their  varying  periods  of  incarceration, 
they  knew  that  forcible  feeding  was  the  only  way 
"  officiously  to  keep  alive "  obdurate  male  prisoners. 
But  "forcible  feeding"  was,  of  course,  another  expedi- 
ent to  force  the  same  dilemma  upon  the  authorities. 
The  unexpressed  formula  was :  "  Either  you  shall  let 
a  woman  break  the  prison  regulations  and  come  out 


i86  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


)f  prison  ill  and  thin,  or  you  shall  odiously  feed  her 
'brcibly."  And  I  need  hardly  say  that  such  a  formula 
implied  by  male  prisoners  would  not  have  availed  them 
in  the  slightest  degree  or  have  secured  anybody's  sym- 
pathy. Those  who  have  seen  male  prisoners  fed 
forcibly  know  what  a  very  unpleasant  business  it  is, 
even  for  the  prison  surgeons ;  and  they  feel,  I  am 
sure,  that  it  adds  quite  unnecessarily  to  their  duties. 
But  there  is  an  obligation  upon  them  not  to  allow 
prisoners  in  their  medical  charge  to  injure  their  health, 
and  so  they  feed  prisoners  forcibly  with  just  the  same 
humane  motive  as  they  would  sew  up  the  wound  if 
a  prisoner  cut  his  throat  with  a  dinner  tin.  And  that 
is  the  long  and  the  short  and  the  top  and  the  bottom 
of  the  forcible  feeding  adjunct  of  militancy  exhibited 
by  Suffragist  prisoners,  most  of  whom,  moreover,  have 
gone  to  prison  because  they  refused  (another  phase 
and  stage  of  martyrdom)  to  take  advantage  of  that 
option  which  has  not  been  given  to  male  prisoners 
who  have  allied  themselves  to  the  cause  and  com- 
mitted the  same  class  of  offences.  And  this  rationa' 
view  of  the  matter  in  no  way  precludes  sympathy  ana 
even  admiration  for  any  women  in  whom  the  motive 
of  the  propagandist  value  of  "  martyrdom "  was  un- 
conscious or  actually  subordinated  to  one  of  "  protest." 

Electioneering  Value 
of  Martyrdom. 

But,  of  course,  the  aspect  of  a  thing  depends  on  how 
you  look  at  it,  and  the  best  way  of  looking  at  anything 
is  to  look  at  it  sanely.  The  militants,  of  course, 
presented  that  phase  distorted,  and  they  hoped  that 
there  was  not  enough  clear  vision  in  the  public  mind  to 
correct  the  distortion.  For  we  cannot  suppose  that  the 
militants  themselves  were  under  any  illusion  as  to 
the  rationality  of  the  matter — though  that  is  the 
beginning  of  another  dreadful  maze  into  which  I 
have  neither  time  nor  inclination  to  grope  my  way,  and 
I  am  quite  willing  to  make  allowances  to  one  side 
if  allowances  be  also  made  to  the  other. 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  i«7 


But  a  little  exhibit  I  once  saw  in  a  Suffrage  committee 
room  window  forcibly  suggests  that  even  forcible  feeding 
was  an  inspiration  meant  to  serve  the  purposes  of  propa- 
ganda rather  than  a  martyrdom  self  -  imposed  and 
enjoyed  for  its  own  sake.  A  bye-election  was  taking 
place  in  Bermondsey,  and  in  the  murk  and  drizzle  of  a 
winter  night  the  Suffragist  committee  rooms  made  a 
welcome  little  patch  of  light.  Having  no  violent 
prejudices  I  sought,  with  a  companion,  the  shelter  of 
the  shop  front.  But  in  the  window,  fascinating  a  little 
crowd  of  urchins,  was  a  realistic  and  beautifully 
executed  little  waxwork  exhibit,  that  seemed  to  have 
come  from  some  diminutive  Chamber  of  Horrors  in 
a  Lilliputian  Madame  Tussaud's.  It  was  a  group — 
a  group  of  prison  doctors,  warders  and  wardresses,  and 
they  were  gathered  round  the  figure  of  a  woman 
prisoner,  held  down  in  a  chair.  There  were  tiny 
indiarubber  pipes,  tiny  tin  bowls,  and  all  the  mechanism 
and  paraphernalia  of  the  operation  represented  —  which 
was,  of  course,  the  operation  of  forcible  feeding.  It 
was,  as  I  say,  a  beautifully  executed  example  of  the 
wax  -  modeller's  art  ;  and  its  cheap  realism — in  a 
double  sense — awed  and  delighted  the  urchins  of 
Bermondsey  enormously.  But  I  was  thinking  of  its 
effects  upon  the  adult  mind — of  the  effect  intended 
and  of  how  difficult  a  thing  it  is  to  chase  those  electoral 
mendacities  that  are  implied  and  not  stated,  and 
thinking  of  the  meanness  of  such  methods  of  con- 
troversy, when  a  member  of  the  committee  came 
to  the  door.  She  noticed  with  interest  two  fairly 
intelligent  looking  men  gazing  at  the  piece  de 
conviction,  and  my  companion  felt  it  was  really 
necessary,  for  the  self  -  respect  of  his  sex,  that  she 
should  be  under  no  illusion  as  to  what  we  thought 
about  it  all.  So,  with  one  eye  on  the  exhibit,  and 
the  other  on  the  committee-woman,  he  exclaimed, 
"Barbarous!  I  call  it  simply  barbarous  !  Can  such  things 
be  allowed  in  a  Christian  country  !  "  And  then,  address- 
ing the  committee-woman,  he  asked  her,  "  But  why  on 
earth  won't  they  let  her  take  it  in  the  ordinary  way  ?  " 


1 88  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Thi  propaganda  had  apparently  not  provided  an 
answer  for  the  unanswerable,  and  the  committee- 
woman  wisely  did  not  attempt  the  impossible.  The 
question,  I  daresay,  was  not  necessary  to  enlighten  her 
mind  —  it  merely  enlightened  her  as  to  the  intelligence 
of  other  minds,  and  as  to  the  futility  of  such  perverted 
martyrdoms  and  upside-down  methods  of  controversy. 
Yet  none  who  condemned  militancy,  and  yet  made 
a  reservation  concerning  man's  cruelty  in  regard  to 
forcible  feeding,  can  ever  have  troubled  to  put  that 
simple  intelligent  question  to  themselves  in  terms  so 
fatal  to  the  electioneering  imposture.  Well,  if  women 
are  coming  out  into  the  rough  and  tumble  of  politic^ 
they  will,  at  any  rate,  be  able  to  keep  up  what  I  fear  i« 
the  traditional  reputation  that  politics  have  acquired 
for  cultivating  the  deceitful  arts  of  mankind.  Nay, 
so  far  from  purifying  politics,  they  may  even  beat  men 
at  their  own  game. 

Chivalry  and  Controversy. 

But  they  will  not  be  allowed  to  have  it  all  their  own 
way  even  then.  Chivalry  will  indeed  have  to  fly  out  of 
the  window  when  political  woman  comes  in  at  the 
door.  But  now,  even  in  this  controversy,  we  "  make 
allowances " — and  Heaven  knows  they  are  needed  ! 
For  it  seems  to  be  a  difficult  thing  for  the  Suffragist 
case  to  be  presented  courteously,  to  say  nothing  of 
it  being  presented  rationally.  If  1  may  give  an 
example  from  my  own  experience,  it  is  merely  because 
it  is  typical  of  the  arrogance  with  which  men,  fighting 
for  womanhood  more  than  for  their  own  sex,  and 
for  humanity  more  than  either,  are  treated  by  women 
Suffragists  in  this  controversy.  In  the  Westminster 
Gazette  some  two  or  three  years  ago  I  wrote  an  article, 
entitled  "  Man,  Woman  and  Nature."  It  was  a  very 
gentle  and  reasonable  contribution,  unprovocative  of 
anything  except  the  thought  required  to  answer  it. 
And  the  most  controversial  speculation  it  contained 
was  this  :  that  the  tendency  of  woman's  enlargement 
of  her  sphere  must  necessarily  be  towards  identification 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  189 


with  man's  habit's,  duties  and  pursuits  in  innumerable 
ways,  which  might  in  turn  involve  a  modification  of  the 
temperamental  and  other  sex  distinctions,  tending 
towards  sex  convergence  instead  of  that  sexual 
divergence  which  Nature  requires  for  the  best  reproduc- 
tion of  the  race.  It  was  not  a  vicious,  stupid, 
malevolent  or  anything  but,  I  hope,  an  intelligent 
speculation  —  as,  indeed,  biologists  who  have  since 
entered  into  the  controversy  have  proved  by  making, 
with  more  authority,  the  same  point.  But  it  did  not 
save  me  from  letters  abusing  the  male  intelligence 
in  general,  and  my  own  in  particular  ;  and  a  male 
correspondent  unwisely  sought  to  correct  me  in  the 
columns  of  the  Wesintinster  Gazette.  But  his  measure 
was  easily  taken,  for  he  was  such  a  careless  contro- 
versialist that  he  based  his  argument  upon  figures 
taken  from  the  census,  which  were  perfectly  correct, 
except  that  they  applied  to  men  and  not  to  women  ; 
as  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  he  stated  that  83 
per  cent  of  the  women  of  Great  Britain,  which  is  just 
the  figure  for  men,  were  industrial  wage-earners !  I 
answered  him  adequately,  and  he  disappeared  from 
the  scene.    But  into  the  correspondence  then  rushed 

Lady  to  support  him.    And  after  saying  that  she 

"  did  not  happen  to  see "  the  article  which  was  the 
origin  of  the  whole  matter,  she  proceeded  to  say  :  "  I 
unhesitatingly  affirm  that  the  standpoint  of  those  who 
'  oppose  Woman  Suffrage  in  old  England  '  does  not 
appear  to  those  who  are  working"  for  the  Suffrage  in 
this  country  as  at  all  '  elevated  '  or  entitled  from  any 
point  of  view,  except  perhaps  their  own,  to  the  smallest 
respect!^'  Now,  if  a  male  controversialist,  having 
admitted  that  he  had  never  read  my  views,  had  "  un- 
hesitatingly affirmed  "  that  they  were  not  entitled  to 
the  smallest  respect,  I  should  have  known  what  to  say 

to  him.    But  in  the  case  of  Lady          I  naturally  held 

my  pen. 

Well,  that  may  be  thought  by  some  a  small  point 
to  make.  I  do  not  think  so,  but  if  it  be  small  in  itself, 
it  has  to  do  with  <i  very  big  fact.    For  if  women  are 


I90  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


coming  out  into  public  activity  as  men's  equals,  giving 
no  quarter  or  courtesy,  I  fear  the  social  rules  under- 
lying man's  relations  to  woman  will  be  correspondingly 
modified,  and  she  will  receive  none.  Nay,  it  will  be 
inevitable,  for  chivalry  is  not  possible  between  "  equals." 
But  it  may  be  said  that  women  will  be  pleased  to  take 
as  good  as  they  give  in  controversy.  So  it  will  be,  no 
doubt.  But  one  shudders  at  the  prospect  of  such 
"  equality,"  and  at  the  vista  it  opens  up  of  raging 
and  tearing  propagandists  clutching  at  each  other's 
iillacies. 

But  even  if  they  can  maintain  their  "  equal  "  position 
in  controversy,  and  are  quite  eager  for  the  fray,  it  ij 
not  in  political  matters  only  that  chivalry  will  have  to 
go  to  the  wall,  if  they  claim  equality  all  round.  In  the 
economic  sphere,  as  in  the  political  sphere,  it  will  be 
rivalry  and  struggle  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest  and 
the  strongest,  and  in  a  succeeding  chapter  we  may 
begin  to  consider,  how  far  "  equality  "  in  the  economic 
sphere  will  take  us.  We  shall  then  have  dealt  with 
the  point  stated  in  the  preceding  chapter :  Does  the 
fact  that  political  power  is  confined  to  man  involve, 
in  truth  and  reality,  any  injustice  to  woman  ?  And 
that  question  falls  into  two  branches:  (i)  the  laws 
affecting  women  and  their  administration,  and  (2)  the 
economic  position  of  woman.  The  first  has  been 
considered,  and  the  second  remains.  But  the  first 
has  taken  us  very  far,  for  it  has  involved  the  consider- 
ation also  of  man's  attitude  to  woman  not  only  in 
respect  of  laws  and  their  administration,  but  in  respect 
of  the  social,  and  personal  relations  of  the  sexes. 
I  set  out  to  prove  that  both  in  the  making  and  the 
administering  of  laws  man  gave  to  woman  a  consider- 
ation he  denies  to  his  own  sex,  and  that  solely  and 
simply  because  she  is  not  his  "  equal "  and  never  can 
be  in  any  rational  sense  of  the  word,  he  gives  her  the 
compensation  not  only  of  the  protection  of  his  laws 
but  of  a  preferential  and  deferential  attitude  to  her 
in  life  generally.  That,  too,  I  think  I  have  proved. 
But  surely  it  needs  no  proof    The  wreck  of  the 


CHIVALRY  AND  MARTYRDOM  191 


'^Birkenhead"  is  man's  answer  to  the  cry  for  equality 
of  the  sexes  ;  and  I  do  not  understand  the  man  or  the 
woman  who  wishes  to  produce  such  an  "equality" 
between  the  sexes  that  the  cry  of  "  Women  first !  " 
will  sound  absurd  and  "  mid-Victorian "...  For,  of 
course,  it  will  always  be  heard.  \ 

'The  heroic  tragedy  of  the  Titanic  has  given  a  speedy  and 
sufficient  vindication  of  that  propliecy.  Much  has  since  been 
writ'.cn  on  its  relation  to  the  general  question  discussed  in  this 
chapter,  but  though  no  anti-Suffragist,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  was 
content  to  debase  that  epic  story  by  saying  of  it,  at  a  leap, 
"  There  !  that  answers  '  V'otes  for  Women  ' !  "  many  Suffragists, 
wriggling  with  its  deep  significance,  descended  into  somewhat 
pitiful  argumentative  depths  to  belittle  the  heroism  of  the  men 
who  obeyed  the  law  of  "Women  First!"  A  characteristic 
argument  during  a  somewhat  painful  controversy  was  that  the 
men  on  the  Titanic  could  take  little  credit,  seeing  that  "man 
owes  chivalry  to  woman  because  she  is  his  mother."  But  this 
rather  miserable  evasion  of  acknowledgment  to  the  dead  over- 
looked altogether  the  fact  that  though  it  may  be  a  man's  duty  to 
give  his  life  for  his  own  mother,  that  duty  supplies  no  motive 
whatever  for  him  giving  his  life  for  another  man's  sister  or  aunt. 
Other  Suffragists,  again,  contended  that  it  was  only  fitting  that 
a  man  should  give  his  life  for  a  woman  "because  a  woman  has 
risked  her  life  for  every  man  born  on  earth."  But  it  is  not  only 
man  that  is  born  of  woman,  and  a  mother  "risks  her  life"  as 
much  for  her  daughters  as  for  her  sons,  to  say  nothing  of  her 
own  maternal  gratification.  And  in  their  efforts  to  avoid  any 
full  acknowledgment  of  the  issue  involved,  by  an  admission  of 
"the  weaker  sex"  motive  of  men.  Suffragist  and  Feminists 
indulged  in  a  perfect  orgie  of  matriolatry,  though  at  other  times 
they  indignantly  resent  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  "  the 
incubator"  and  "baby-machine"  view  of  a  woman's  life.  But 
the  meanest  and  conamonest  evasion  practised  was  that  repre- 
sented (to  quote  one  instance  only)  by  the  plea  :  "To  anyone 
with  a  scrap  of  imagination,  the  real  victims  of  the  Titanic,  the 
real  martyrs  to  chivalry,  were  not  those  who  faced  the  brief 
agony  of  drowning,  but  those  who  were  forced  to  accept  the 
long  agony  of  broken  lives."  Putting  aside  the  false  assumption 
that  the  alternative  presented  in  such  a  case  is  only  that  as 
between  husbands  and  their  own  wives,  this  view  would  award 
the  real  martyr's  crown,  at  the  next  shipwreck,  to  those 
husbands  who,  putting  off  in  their  boats,  and  leaving  their  wives 
behind,  waved  their  adieux  in  saying,  "  You  will  only  take  a 
minute  to  drown — we  are  going  to  live  our  broken  lives  without 
you  I"     Few  episodes  have  more  sadly  revealed  the  poverty  of 


192 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


ordinary  human  sentiment  in  Feminists  when  it  comes  into 
conflict  with  their  creed,  than  the  perverted  eagerness  shown  .'n 
that  controversy  to  take  any  devious  route  rather  than  confront 
and  acknowledge  the  plain  and  revealed  fact  :  that  if  men  speak 
of  women  as  "  the  weaker  sex  "  they  are  also  prepared  to  live  up 
to  that  theory  by  dying  for  it. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


The  Suffragist  s  Bible. 

THE  MAN  WHO  WAS  NEVER  A  BOY — MILL'S  IDEA  OF 
MEN  —  "  WHAT  IS  YOURS  IS  MINE  "  —  CUI  BONO  ?  — 
HIGHER  EDUCATION  AND  MARRIED  HAPPINESS — THE 
ENTHUSIAST'S  DREAM  —  THE  FALSE  ANALOGY  —  THE 
UNIQUENESS  OF  THE  HUMAN  SEX — A  RIVAL  ANA- 
LOGY —  "  MERELY  PHYSICAL  STRENGTH." 


I 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


The  Suffragist's  Bible. 

The  question  of  the  economic  position  of  woman  has, 
strictly  speaking,  nothing  to  do  with  Woman  Suffrage 
— though  it  has  everything  to  do  with  what  Woman 
Suffrage  involves.  But  the  case  against  giving  Votes 
to  Women  can  be  completely  presented  without 
touching  the  question  of  woman's  economic  position  at 
all — though  as  soon  as  we  do  touch  that  question  we 
enter  upon  the  wide  field  of  the  fundamental  change  in 
the  status  of  woman  that  would  follow  upon  her 
political  enfranchisement. 

We  may,  however,  now  pause,  having  considered  the 
case  against  the  Suffrage  in  all  its  chief  aspects,  to 
devote  some  attention  to  John  Stuart  Mill's  work, 
"The  Subjection  of  Women."  And,  certainly,  in  a 
controversy  so  far-reaching  as  this  it  would  be  un- 
fair to  consider  the  case  for  Woman  Suffrage  as 
answered  by  dealing  only  with  the  arguments  and 
claims  of  the  modern  Suffragists,  and  ignoring  the  big- 
gest contribution  to  their  cause  that  has  proceeded  from 
any  mind — and  that  mind,  I  need  hardly  say,  a 
man's. ' 

Mill's  book,  "  The  Subjection  of  Women,"  is  really 
the  Suffragist's  Bible.  Nothing  in  their  case  is  not 
contained  within  its  pages,  and  everything  that  can  be 
said  in  favour  of  their  cause  is  there  said  much  better 
than  they  themselves  can  say  it. 

'  Just  as  the  most  temperate  and  reasoned,  and  therefore  the 
most  effective,  contribution  to  the  modern  discussion  comes  from 
a  man — Mr  W.  Lyon  Blease,  in  "  The  Emancipation  of  English 
Women."  It  is  perhaps,  however,  indiscreet  to  say  so,  as  the 
author  might  regard  that  opinion  us  only  another  manifestation 
of  "the  male  hydra-headed  egoism"  which  he  attacks. 


195 


196  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


In  the  whole  realm  of  literature  it  would  be  hard  to 
find  a  book  conceived  in  a  nobler  spirit,  and  the 
Suffragists  ought  certainly  to  honour  Mill's  memory 
more  than  that  of  any  woman  who  has  pioneered  their 
cause.  For  the  book  is  even  a  passionate  as 
well  as  a  reasoned  appeal  for  "justice"  to  women,  and 
the  book,  in  its  intention,  ennobles  even  the  idea  of 
justice.  No  man  who  reads  it  can  read  it  without  a 
thrill  of  admiration  for  its  courage,  its  intellectual 
honesty — within  the  limits  of  the  argument — and  its 
chivalrous  feeling.  And  I  think  no  woman,  however 
violent  and  militant  she  may  be  in  her  actions  and 
views,  should  damn  with  her  contempt  the  sex  that  has 
produced  such  a  champion  of  their  cause. 

It  is  odd,  however,  that  the  Suffragists  do  not  make 
much  use  of  this,  their  Bible.  They  will  say,  no  doubt, 
that  they  use  its  arguments,  and  perhaps  even  think,  in 
the  vanity  of  their  hearts,  that  they  improve  upon 
them.  But  even  so,  it  is  odd  that  they  neglect  the 
influence  that  might  be  exerted  by  frequent  reference 
to  the  plea  of  the  greatest  mind  that  has  lent  support 
to  their  cause.  Other  minds  as  great  as  his,  and  his 
contemporaries,  took  an  entirely  opposite  view  to  his 
view,  but  the  very  rareness,  and  uniqueness,  in  fact,  of 
Mill's  support — the  only  first-class  mind  that  has 
supported  Woman  Suffrage — ought  to  make  his  work 
supremely  prominent  in  their  propaganda.  But  one 
never  hears  them  mention  it,  and  apparently  it  is 
not  a  well-thumbed  Bible  at  all. 

The  Man  Who  Was 
Never  a  Boy. 

The  truth  is,  though  they  would  not  be  likely  to 
admit  it,  that  their  Bible  lacks  inspiration.  It  is  in- 
spired by  a  noble  sense  of  abstract  justice,  but  it  is 
not  inspired  by  any  accurate  and  intimate  sense  of  the 
realities  of  the  world  we  live  in.  Consider  what  Mill 
was,  and  we  can  see  that  this  is  just  such  a  book  as 
he  would  have  written.  He  was,  in  his  own  language, 
"never  a  boy,"    At  three  years  of  age,  when  most 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  i97 


boys  are  struggling  with  the  alphabet,  he  had  begun  to 
learn  Greek.  His  father  crammed  him  with  learning 
as  chickens  are  crammed  for  the  market ;  and  at 
fourteen  he  had  an  adult  intelligence  although  he  had 
never  held  a  cricket  bat  in  his  hand.  He  was,  more  or 
less,  a  recluse,  over-intellectualised  in  his  youth,  and  in 
his  manhood  the  intellectual  side  of  him  was  so 
supreme  that  he  himself  recognised  his  feelings  and 
emotions  were  atrophied.  It  was  not  that  he  had  no 
capacity  for  feeling — his  mind  was  more  sensitive  to 
justice  than  most  men's  hearts — but  he  looked  at  every- 
thing from  the  intellectual  and  rational  point  of  view— 
and  expressed  even  emotion  in  terms  of  logic.  But  his 
logic  went  wrong  from  the  start  because,  in  dealing 
with  a  very  human  question,  he  based  his  logical  case 
not  upon  the  facts  of  human  existence,  but  upon  a  false 
analogy  between  the  relative  position  of  men  and 
women  and  the  phenomena  of  political  change  in 
the  different  classes  of  men. 

Such  a  book  as  "  The  Subjection  of  Women  "  was 
therefore  just  such  a  book  as  such  a  man  might  have 
been  expected  to  write.  He  was  a  philosopher  living 
in  his  own  vacuum — a  vacuum  from  which  nearly  all 
human  feeling  had  been  withdrawn  by  that  intellectual 
pump,  his  mind.  John  Bright  expressed  something  of 
the  same  view  when  he  said  after  the  publication  of 
"  The  Subjection  of  Women  "  (as  Mr  Justin  M'Carthy 
has  just  recalled)  that  "a  man,  by  setting  himself  to  be 
a  thinker,  might  think  himself  out  of  practical  politics 
altogether,"  and  he  spoke  of  Mill  as  "one  who  sees  men 
as  trees  walking."  And  the  intellectual  and  rationalist 
age  that  produced  the  Economic  Man — the  being  who 
has  no  motive  in  life  but  gain — produced  his  counter- 
part in  Mill's  idea  of  the  Husband  as  a  man  who 
acted  from  no  other  motive  but  the  love  of  power. 

Mill  sat  down  to  write  "  The  Subjection  of  Women  " 
with  this  fact  in  his  mind  :  that  women  were  legally 
subjected  to  men  by  the  laws  regulating  the  relations 
of  husband  and  wife,  and  he  enlarged  that  relative  and 
legal  position  into  the  conception  of  man  as  a  tyrant 


198 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


and  woman  as  a  slave.  Given  the  fact  that  man  was 
legally  the  woman's  superior  in  a  domestic  relation, 
that  he  was  the  head  of  the  household  and  the  woman 
owed  him  obedience,  he  sat  down  to  project,  from  his 
inner  intellectual  consciousness,  those  two  beings  to  the 
limit  of  their  theoretical  development,  and  he  produced 
the  husband  as  the  Tyrant  and  the  wife  as  the  Slave — 
not  using  either  term  with  any  figurative  allowance, 
but  using  both  terms  in  their  starkest  meaning.  What 
he  said  to  himself  was  this :  Where  there  is  power, 
there  must  be  tyranny  ;  where  there  is  obedience,  there 
must  be  slavery.  Husbands  are  therefore  tyrants  and 
wives  are  slaves. 

Mill's  Idea  of  Men. 

It  is  in  the  second  chapter  of  the  book  that  he  deals 
with  the  domestic  subjection  of  women,  and  the  second 
chapter  is  now  entirely  out  of  date,  which  is  perhaps 
one  reason  why  the  book  is  not  more  frequently  re- 
ferred to.  For  if  it  were  now  re-issued  that  chapter 
alone  would  almost  reduce  the  book  to  one  of  mere 
literary  interest,  and  go  a  long  way  towards  vitiating 
the  whole  of  it.  In  a  previous  chapter  we  have  already 
seen  how  completely  Mill's  summary  of  woman's  do- 
mestic status  is  now  out  of  date,  and  as  he  connected 
very  intimately  indeed  her  "domestic  slavery"  with  his 
argument  for  political  enfranchisement,  his  book,  from 
a  propagandist  point  of  view,  would  now  ill  serve  the 
cause.  For,  in  the  first  place,  a  prejudice  would  natur- 
ally be  created  against  the  book  in  the  reader  who 
came  across  such  passages  as  these  :  "  There  remain  no 
legal  slaves  except  the  mistress  of  every  house,"  and  "  I 
am  far  from  pretending  that  wives  are  in  general  no 
better  treated  than  slaves ;  but  no  slave  is  a  slave  to 
the  same  length  and  in  so  full  a  sense  of  the  word  as  a 
wife  is."  And  the  second  respect  in  which  the  book 
would  tell  against  the  cause  rather  than  help  it,  is  that 
a  perusal  of  Mill's  view  of  men's  attitude  to  their  wives, 
in  the  light  of  modern  actuality,  would  suggest  very 
forcibly  what  is  the  truth — that  an  ounce  of  actual  ex- 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  199 


perience  is  worth  any  one  page  of  Mill's  elaborate 
theorising.  In  one  passage  he  says,  putting  his  finger 
on  the  spot  (as  he  believed)  of  the  primum  mobile  of 
man  in  relation  to  the  whole  question  : 

"And  here,  I  believe,  is  the  clue  to  the  feelings  of  those  men 
who  have  a  real  antipathy  to  the  equal  freedom  of  women.  I  be- 
lieve they  are  afraid,  not  lest  women  should  be  unwilling  to  marry, 
but  lest  they  should  insist  that  marriage  should  be  an  equal 
condition  ;  lest  all  women  of  spirit  and  capacity  should  prefer 
doing  almost  anything  else,  not  in  their  own  eyes  degrading, 
rather  than  marry  when  marrying  is  giving  themselves  a  master, 
a  master,  too,  of  all  their  earthly  possessions." 

Well,  a  woman  in  marrying  a  man  no  longer  makes 
him  the  master  of  all  her  earthly  possessions;  nor  does 
she  make  him  "master"  at  all  except  in  that  colloquial 
sense  of  the  word  in  which  it  still  survives  amongst 
ordinary  housewives,  some  of  whom  are  content  to 
leave  their  husbands  the  shadow  of  that  compliment 
whilst  retaining  the  substance  of  the  matter  in  their 
own  hands.  But  the  belief  that  he  had  got  the  clue  to 
a  man's  objection  to  Woman  Suffrage,  and  its  correlated 
changes,  in  supposing  that  men  are  afraid  women  would 
insist  on  equal  conditions  in  marriage,  was  singularly 
wide  of  the  mark.  Already  marriage  is  so  equal  in  its 
conditions  that  it  offers  no  advantages  to  men  whatever 
(apart  from  the  higher  view  of  marriage  which  Mill 
seemed  to  think  men  incapable  of  taking)  but  those 
which  proceed  from  the  bare  domestic  comfort  for 
securing  which  a  man  pledges  his  freedom  up  to  the 
hilt,  although  he  does  not  always  get  the  comfort.  But 
that  passage  is  rendered  wholly  absurd  and  revealed  as 
rather  malevolent,  by  the  mere  fact  that  so  far  from 
woman's  freer  domestic  status  depending  upon  her  own 
political  enfranchisement,  as  he  thought,  it  has  been 
conferred  upon  her  by  man-made  laws,  even  though 
political  power  is  still  denied  to  her.  But  Mill's  ob- 
session as  to  the  tyrannical  motives  of  men  was  so  pro- 
nounced that  he  seemed  to  assume  men  married  women, 
not  out  of  affection,  but  to  gratify  a  natural  instinct 
and  desire  for  tyranny,  whilst  rejoicing  that  the  law, 


200  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


which  had  abolished  all  other  forms  of  slavery,  per- 
mitted every  man  to  have  one  slave — viz.,  his  wife — all 
to  himself :  "  For  every  man  who  desires  power  desires 
it  most  over  those  nearest  to  him,  with  whom  his  life 
is  passed,  with  whom  he  has  most  concerns  in  common, 
and  in  whom  any  independence  of  his  authority  is 
oftenest  likely  to  interfere  with  his  individual  prefer- 
ences." Well,  there  is  merely  an  historical  interest  in 
that  view  of  a  husband's  motive  and  power.  Whatever 
be  a  man's  motive  now  in  getting  married,  he  is  a  foo\ 
if  he  expects  a  legal  slave,  because  marriage  does  not 
give  it  to  him.  His  "  slave  "  can  leave  him  the  morning 
after  marriage,  and  no  power  can  force  her  back  to  him. 
But  it  is  not  necessary  to  examine  that  part  of  the 
case,  for  to-day,  at  any  rate,  law  and  fact  and  the 
general  experience  refute  both  its  statements  and  its 
psychology. 

"  What  is  Yours  is  Mine." 

But  the  point  is  that  this  conception  of  man  as  a 
tyrant  and  woman  as  his  slave  dominated  his  whole 
case  for  the  political  enfranchisement  of  women,  for  he 
was  pleading  not  only  that  laws  should  be  altered  but 
that  women  should  be  allowed  to  make  them.  He 
wished  in  the  first  place  to  set  women  free  from  all 
domestic  subjection  (though  he  did  not  wish  to  set 
men  free  from  the  responsibility  of  maintaining  them), 
and  having  postulated  husbands  as  tyrants  and  wives 
as  slaves,  he  proceeded  to  base  his  claim  for  her  politi- 
cal enfranchisement  on  the  same  grounds :  "  On  the 
other  point  which  is  involved  in  the  just  equality  of 
women,  their  admissibility  to  all  the  functions  and 
occupations  hitherto  retained  as  the  monopoly  of  the 
stronger  sex,  I  should  anticipate  no  difficulty  in  con- 
vincing any  one  who  has  gone  with  me  on  the  subject 
of  equality  of  women  in  the  family."  But  that  is  just 
where  the  difficulty,  in  fact,  comes  in.  For  there  are 
many  husbands  to-day  who,  so  far  from  being  them- 
selves domestic  tyrants,  are  subject  to  an  overpowering 
personality  in  petticoats,  but  who  nevertheless  do  not 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  201 


"go  with"  Mill  or  anybody  else  in  assenting  to  the 
political  enfranchisement  of  women. 

But  so  anxious  was  Mill  to  establish  a  condition  of 
equality  between  husband  and  wife  that  he  states  one 
proposition  which,  if  applied  now,  would  turn  the 
position  against  him  and  make  a  woman  much  more 
man's  "slave"  than  she  was  when  he  wrote.  The 
Married  Women's  Property  Acts  had  not  then  been 
passed,  and  in  urging  "  a  woman's  right  to  her  own 
property  "  he  laid  down  this  proposition  :  "  The  rule 
is  simple.  Whatever  would  be  the  husband's  or  wife's 
if  they  were  not  married,  should  be  under  their  ex- 
clusive control  during  marriage."  Well,  what  the 
husband  earns,  or  what  he  receives  as  income  from 
property,  would  be  his  whether  he  were  married  of 
not.  It  is  only  by  the  fact  of  his  marriage  that  he 
shares  it  with  anotlier,  and  though  Mill  went  on  to 
say,  "  I  have  no  relish  for  a  community  of  goods  resting 
on  the  doctrine  that  what  is  mine  is  yours  but  what 
is  yours  is  not  mine,"  that  is  exactly  the  position 
of  the  husband  now  that  the  Married  Women's 
Property  Acts  give  the  wife  separate  control  of  her 
own  income  but  leave  the  husband  with  the  respon- 
sibility of  maintaining  his  wife  and  their  children  out 
of  his  own  earnings  or  income.  But  if  marriage  is  to 
give  so  equal  a  status  to  both  husband  and  wife  that 
even  the  fact  of  the  husband's  maintenance  of  a  wife 
and  family  is  to  give  him  no  advantage  or  consideration, 
and  not  even  the  often  empty  title  of  the  head  of  the 
house,  then  the  Married  Women's  Property  Acts  ought 
to  be  reconsidered,  on  Mill's  own  shewing,  for  they  do 
proclaim  the  principle,  but  as  against  the  husband,  that 
"  what  is  mine  is  yours  but  what  is  yours  is  not  mine." 
Such  are  the  difficulties  which  beset  the  theory 
of  perfect  equality  of  status  even  in  the  domestic 
sphere, 

Cui  Bono? 

But  it  was,  as  T  have  said,  the  domestic  inequalities 
that  supplied  Mill  with  his  arguments  for  woman's 
o 


202  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


political  enfranchisement,  except  so  far  as  he  based 
her  enfranchisement  also  upon  abstract  justice.  But 
as  Professor  Dicey  has  pointed  out,  even  Mill  admitted 
that  every  abstract  right  must  be  based  upon  "  the 
permanent  interests  of  man  as  a  progressive  being  " — 
though  in  "  The  Subjection  of  Women,"  he  expressed 
the  point  even  more  emphatically.    And  his  book  is 
especially  weak  in  its  failure  to  give  any  reason 
for  expecting  a  beneficent  result  from  the  emancipa- 
tion of  women  commensurate  with  those  results  fairly 
to  be  asked  for  when  such  a  revolution  is  in  question. 
He  argues  that  woman's  nature  and  capacities  are 
really  an  unknown  quantity,  because  she  has,  in  the 
main,  been  confined  to  one  sphere,  and  so  he  claims 
to  be  entitled  to  conjecture  what  no  one  can  prove 
or  disprove — that  if  woman  penetrated  into  man's 
sphere  she  would  in  time  reveal  the  same  capacities 
as  man.  So  she  might — or  might  not  —  but  in  order 
to  bring  it  to  the  proof  woman  would  have  to  duplicate 
man  through  all  his  interests  and  experiences.  But 
he  does  not  face  the  problem  of  whether  what  woman 
would  do  in  her  new  sphere  might  not  so  injure  her 
efficiency  in  the  other  sphere  that,  on  the  whole  and 
in  the  sum,  the  "  abstract  right "  to  political  and 
economic  equality  might  not  be  "  in  the  permanent 
interests  of  man  as  a  progressive  being."    Yet  this 
problem  must  have  occurred  to  him,  for  when  he  is 
arguing  for  women's  domestic  equality  he  says:  "If  .  .  , 
the  wife  undertakes  the  careful  and  economical  applica- 
tion of  the  husband's  earnings  to  the  general  comfort  of 
the  family,  she  takes  not  only  her  fair  share  but  usually 
the  larger  share  of  the  bodily  and  mental  exertion 
required  by  their  joint  existence."    A  manifest  ab- 
surdity, however,  for  it  involves  the  proposition  that 
it  is  harder  work  to  spend  money  than  to  earn  it.  And 
then  he  continues:  "If  she  undertakes  any  additional 
position  it  seldom  relieves  her  from  this,  but  only 
prevents  her  from  performing-  it  properly.    The  care 
which  she   is   herself  disabled  from  taking  of  the 
children  of  the  household  nobody  else  takes  ;  those  of 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  203 


the  children  who  do  not  die  grow  up  as  best  they  can." 
And  again  :  "  The  superintendence  of  a  household, 
even  when  not  in  other  respects  laborious,  is  extremely 
onerous  to  the  thoughts  ;  it  requires  incessant  vigilance, 
an  eye  from  which  no  detail  escapes,  and  presents 
questions  for  consideration  and  solution,  foreseen  and 
unforeseen,  at  every  hour  of  the  day,  from  which  the 
person  responsible  for  them  can  hardly  ever  shake 
herself  free." 

Well,  if  the  domestic  sphere  is  so  exacting  for  those 
who  perform  its  duties  conscientiously — as  Mill  ad- 
mitted, and  nobody  wishes  to  deny — and  if  the  normal 
woman  is  still  to  find  her  vocation  in  the  domestic 
sphere,  and  not  to  compete  with  man  in  his,  it  is  plain 
that  she  will  still  have  enough  to  do  to  justify  her 
economic  existence  in  the  home  as  now.  But  if  women 
in  the  mass  and  even  in  considerable  numbers  are  to 
invade  man's  sphere,  it  can  only  be  at  the  expense 
not  merely  of  her  own  domesticity,  but  of  the  home 
and  family  itself. 

And  what  compensation  did  Mill  think  she  would 
give  to  human  society  for  her  entrance  into  this  other 
sphere?  Well,  apart  from  many  general  assumptions 
of  her  capacity,  which  placed  her  as  the  potential  equal 
of  man  in  every  concern  of  government  and  service 
except  where  physical  considerations  (which  he  ignored) 
might  enter,  he  confined  himself  to  showing  that  a 
widening  of  woman's  educational  training  and  experi- 
ence might  make  her  a  better  mate  for  her  husband. 
And  before  proceeding  further,  it  is  very  well  worth 
while  to  pause  at  Mill's  claim  that  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  women  would  tend  to  increase  domestic 
happiness. 

Higher  Education  and 
Married  Happiness. 

In  the  last  few  pages  of  the  book  he  dwells  on  the 
subject  with  much  eloquence  and  even  feeling.  He 
asserts  that  "the  totally  different  bringing  up  of  the 
two  sexes  makes  it  next  to  an  impossibility  to  form  a 


204  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


well-assorted  union" — as  to  which  one  can  only  say 
that  that  neighbour  to  an  impossibility  is  achieved 
over  and  over  again,  in  countless  thousands  of  unions 
in  each  generation.    And  he  says  • 

"What  marriage  may  be  in  the  case  of  two  persons  of  cul- 
tivated faculties,  identical  in  opmions  and  purposes,  between 
whom  there  exists  that  best  kind  of  equality,  similarity  of  powers 
and  capacities  with  reciprocal  superiority  in  them — so  that  each 
can  enjoy  the  luxury  of  looking  up  to  the  other,  and  can  have 
alternatively  the  pleasure  of  leading  and  of  being  led  in  the  path 
of  development — I  will  not  attempt  to  describe.  To  those  who 
can  conceive  it,  there  is  no  need  ;  to  those  who  cannot,  it  would 
appear  the  dream  of  an  enthusiast." 

Now,  short  of  assenting  to  such  an  optimistic  ideal 
as  that  of  two  persons,  of  cultivated  or  uncultivated 
faculties,  ever  being  found  to  be  "  identical  in  opinion 
and  purposes,"  any  Anti-suffragist  might  adopt  that 
passage,  word  for  word,  by  the  mere  alteration  of 
"  similarity  "  to  "  dissimilarity  "  (of  "  powers  and  capaci- 
ties ")  to  describe  the  conjugal  felicity  which  is  to  be 
attained  by  men  and  women  "  behaving  as  such,"  to 
put  the  matter  concisely.  But  Mill  held  that  such 
felicity  was  next  to  impossible  of  attainment  so  long 
as  women  did  not  receive  the  higher  education  for 
which  he  pleaded  :  "  While  women  are  brought  up  as 
they  are,  a  man  and  woman  will  but  rarely  find  in  one 
another  real  agreement  of  tastes  and  wishes  as  to 
daily  life." 

Well,  practically  the  whole  organisation  and  pro- 
vision of  higher  education  for  women  has  taken  place 
since  Mill  wrote  those  words  that  helped,  more  than 
anything  else,  to  stimulate  the  provision  of  higher 
education.  The  opening  of  examinations,  the  founda- 
tions of  colleges,  the  participation  in  university  training, 
as  well  as  the  entire  system  of  State-provided  elemen- 
tary education  for  girls  as  well  as  for  boys,  have  come 
about  since  Mill  advocated  these  things  as  the  best 
guarantee  for  domestic  felicity.  Girton  was  opening 
its  doors  before  the  reviewers  had  ceased  reviewing 
"The  Subjection  of  Women" — for  books  in  those 
days  were  not  reviewed  on  the  day  of  publication  and 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  205 


forgotten  by  the  end  of  the  week.  Newnham  followed 
two  years  later,  and  in  the  same  year  the  Board 
Schools  arose  in  the  land.  Since  then  the  older 
universities  have,  in  varying  measure,  extended  their 
advantages  to  women,  and  the  throwing  open  by 
London  University  of  all  its  degrees  to  women  pre- 
luded the  admission  of  woman  to  all  newly  opened 
universities,  on  terms  of  perfect  equality  with  men  so 
far  as  degrees  are  concerned.  Broadly  speaking,  we 
may  say  that  whereas  when  Mill  wrote  no  generation 
of  women  had  grown  up  which  had  received  a  univer- 
sity education,  since  Mill  wrote  two  generations  of 
middle-class  women  have  received  the  benefit  of  the 
higher  education  he  urged  as  a  condition  precedent 
to  domestic  felicity. 

The  Enthusiast's  Dream. 

And  do  we  find  that  they  have  realised  "  the  dream 
of  an  enthusiast,"  even  in  that  partial  measure  which 
he  would  now  say  was  all  that  could  be  expected  from 
a  partial  realisation  (as  he  might  contend  it  still  only 
was)  of  his  recipe  for  conjugal  bliss  ?  So  far  have  we 
receded  in  daylight  reality,  from  the  dream  of  the 
enthusiast  that  the  completion  of  fifty  years  of  the 
higher  education  of  women  synchronises  with  marriage 
having  fallen  into  such  disrepute  that  higher  educated 
women,  as  we  shall  see,  are  now  asking  us  to  revise  our 
attitude  to  marriage  altogether,  and  the  demand  for 
an  easier  escape  from  marriage  has  become  an  integral 
part  of  the  woman's  movement. 

It  is  no  part  of  my  business  to  say  that  the  higher 
education  of  women  and  domestic  felicity  are  incom- 
patible, but  it  is  part  of  my  business  to  point  out  that 
the  one  has  not  brought  the  other  as  Mill  confidently 
predicted.  It  is  a  commonplace  of  observation  that  happy 
marriages,  particularly  among  the  class  whose  women 
have  benefited  by  the  higher  education,  are  decreasing 
rather  than  increasing ;  and  there  is  very  good  ground 
for  connecting  one  phenomenon  with  the  others.  In- 
deed,  a  reviewer  in  The  Nation,  dealing  with  Miss 


206  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Ellen  Key's  book  on  "  Love  and  Marriage  "  (a  book  in 
which  something  like  free  union  and  free  disunion  are 
advocated)  specially  dwells  upon  the  influence  of  educa- 
tion in  producing  conjugal  estrangements,  because  of 
the  consequent  increase  of"  sensibility,"  leading  in  turn 
not  to  Mill's  "  real  agreement  of  tastes  and  wishes 
as  to  daily  life,"  or  identity  of"  opinions  and  purposes," 
but  to  their  direct  opposite  :  incompatibilities  of  tastes, 
wishes,  and  temperaments.  And  undoubtedly  the 
development  of  higher  education  among  women,  so 
far  from  realising  the  dream  of  the  enthusiast,  has 
resulted  in  unsettling  a  good  many  more  homes  than  it 
has  rendered  happy,  to  say  nothing  of  the  other  effect 
of  preventing  a  good  many  homes  being  started  at  all 
by  the  leading  away  of  higher  educated  women  from 
domestic  life  altogether.' 

'  The  incompatibility  between  higher  education  and  a  pre- 
dilection, or  even  a  qualification,  for  marriage  might,  however, 
be  more  courageously  maintained.  As  these  pages  go  through 
the  press  an  article  written  by  Miss  Helen  Hamilton  appears  in 
the  Freewoman  (p.  66),  dealing  with  the  manufacture  of  spinsters 
by  college  training.  It  is  a  most  sympathetic  and  penetrating 
survey  of  the  effect  produced  upon  feminine  character  by  higher 
education.  "  The  College  woman,  speaking  generally,  for  all 
her  admirable  qualities,  seems  destined  almost  inevitably  to 
spinsterhood.  .  .  Women,  therefore,  preeminently  fitted,  one 
would  imagine,"  (as  Mill  imagined)  "for  wife  and  motherhood 
are  either  averse  to  marriage,  or  are  not  to  the  masculine  taste.  . 
Whatever  the  explanation,  the  fact  remains  that  a  latge  and 
increasing  number  of  intellectual  women  are  destined  to  live  the 
incomplete  life  of  spinsters.  .  .  The  higher  education  has 
failed,  I  think,  in  this  respect.  It  has  not  succeeded  in  turning  out, 
as  a  rule,  women  who  combine  the  graces  of  learning  with 
ordinary  feminine  attributes  and  charm.  .  .  I  do  not  say  that 
this  is  the  confessed  or  even  the  desired  aim  of  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  women.  I  am  sure  it  is  not.  Neveitheless  it  tends  in 
many  cases  to  produce  the  type  described  so  often  as  an  inferior 
imitation  of  a  man.  .  .  Sometimes  she  is  an  intellectual  or 
moral  prig,  or  both  .  .  ,  not  infrequently  self-assertive  and 
apt  to  over-rate  her  own  importance  in  the  scheme  of  things. 
Last,  but  by  no  means  least,  she  tends  to  lose  the  desire  to  please 
and  her  sex-attraction."  These  passages  of  experience,  when 
contrasted  with  the  theories  that  Mill  projected,  should  serve  to 
make  us  distrust  the  theorist  who  deals  in  great  human  issues 
without  taking  into  account  the  forces  of  hurran  nature.    I  ought 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  207 


And  if  Mill  could  go  so  far  wrong  in  his  theory  that 
to  raise  the  educational  standard  of  women  was  all  that 
was  required  to  produce  the  domestic  felicity  and  "  real 
agreement  of  tastes  and  wishes  as  to  daily  life,"  have 
we  any  reason  to  suppose  that  his  allied  theory  of 
the  national  well-being  that  would  follow  upon  woman's 
exercise  of  political  power  was  not  also  the  dream 
of  an  enthusiast  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact  and  experience, 
a  high  degree  of  academic  education  (which  is  not 
co-terminous  with  intelligence,  by  any  means,  especially 
that  kind  of  intelligence  required  in  a  home)  has 
very  little  to  do  with  domestic  happiness.  That  is  not 
to  say  that  an  educated  man  should  marry  his  cook — 
though  even  that  rash  experiment  has  realised  actual 
success — but  the  love  and  esteem  of  man  and  wife,  and 
their  own  natures,  have  more  to  do  with  the  happiness 
of  their  marriage  than  the  standard  of  edu-^ation  which 
either  has  attained  if  they  belong  more  or  less  to 
the  same  social  class.  The  dream  of  the  enthusiast, 
indeed,  is  more  likely  to  be  realised  by  a  recipe  that 
would  have  made  Mill's  book  all  the  better — a  little 
less  intellect  and  a  good  deal  more  human  feeling. 

The  False  Analogy. 

Mill's  work  is  extremely  logical — but  he  laid  his  own 
foundations.  He  saw  in  the  relations  between  man 
and  woman  only  an  extension  and  a  survival  of  other 
forms  of  tyranny  or  the  denial  of  liberty.  Looking 
back  upon  history,  he  saw  that  all  the  struggles  of 
men,  except  those  made  against  Nature  herself,  were 
struggles  of  one  class  against  the  bondage  in  which 
another  class  held  them — of  slaves  against  their 
owners,  of  the  feudal  serf  against  the  over-lord,  of 
the  pleb  against  the  patrician,  of  nobles  against  kings, 
and  of  the  common  people  against  everybody  but 

to  say  that  it  appears,  not  in  any  Anti-si  ffrage  publication,  but  in 
an  excellently  written  Feminist  review,  which  appears  to  contrive 
to  support  the  most  advanced  Feminism  in  combination  with  a 
commendable  human  tolerance  of  any  views  falling  within  the 
Feministic  movement. 


208  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


themselves.  And  in  considering  the  poHtical  develop- 
ment of  nations,  he  saw  that  it  had  depended  and 
arisen  from  the  emancipation  of  one  class  after  another, 
and  the  overthrowing  of  one  social  dominion  after 
another.  And  then,  after  looking  at  these  things, 
he  saw  in  the  political  unenfranchisement  of  women 
the  old  tyranny  of  class,  and  almost  the  last  remaining 
subjection  of  one  class  to  another,  the  last  denial  of 
political  freedom  :  "  By  degrees  the  slavery  of  the  male 
sex  has  been  at  length  abolished,  and  that  of  the 
female  sex  has  been  gradually  changed  into  a  milder 
dependence.  But  this  dependence  ...  is  the  primitive 
state  of  slavery  lasting  on.  ...  It  has  not  lost  the 
taint  of  its  brutal  origin." 

And  so  we  come  to  the  false  analogy  which,  I 
venture  to  think,  entirely  vitiates  Mill's  work.  The 
analogy  is  between  men  and  women  (considered  as 
masters  and  slaves)  and  the  artificial  divisions  among 
mankind  in  which  one  class  has  been  held  in  subjection 
by  another.  But  Mill  was  too  good  a  logician  to 
overlook  the  weakness — a  weakness  at  the  very  core  of 
his  argument.  He  recognised  that  it  might  be  de- 
tected, then  met  it  obliquely,  and  then  proceeded  on 
his  way  as  though  he  had  disposed  of  the  objection 
that  the  analogy  was  false.  And  he  performed  this 
feat  partly  by  the  use  he  made  of  the  word  "  natural," 
using  it  in  two  senses,  and  then  confusing  the  whole 
point  by  the  ambiguity  of  the  word.  He  recognises 
the  objection  to  the  falseness  of  the  analogy  in  these 
words,  taken  from  the  earliest  pages  of  the  book  : 

"  Some  will  object  that  comparison  cannot  fairly  be  made 
between  the  government  of  the  male  sex  and  the  forms  of  unjust 
power  which  I  have  adduced  in  illustration  of  it,  since  these  are 
arbitrary,  and  the  effect  of  mere  usurpation,  while  it,  on  the 
contrary,  is  natural.  But  was  there  ever  a  domination  which  did 
not  appear  natural  to  those  who  possessed  it  ?" 

Now,  that  evades  the  point  altogether.  Recognising 
the  weakness  of  the  comparison,  he  meets  it  by  what  is 
really  a  juggle  on  the  word  "  natural  "  (though  the 
juggle  comes  out  more  clearly  in  a  long  passage  in 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  209 


continuance  of  that  which  1  have  quoted).  But  those 
who  "  object  to  the  comparison  "  are  still  right,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  whatever  confusion  other  ages  and 
peoples  may  have  made  in  the  use  of  the  word 
"  natural,"  the  subjections  of  the  classes  he  has 
instanced  are  "  arbitrary  "  and  are  the  effect  of  "  mere 
usurpation,"  while  "on  the  contrary"  the  division 
between  men  and  women  has  no  counterpart  whatever 
in  the  artificial  and  arbitrary  and  mutable  divisions 
between  different  classes  of  men.  Mill  does  get  round 
the  objection  to  his  comparison,  but  he  gets  round 
it  by  making  a  wide  detour  and  ignoring  the  really 
natural  division  of  the  sexes,  and  by  assuming  the 
difference  between  them — and  consequently  the 
difference  in  their  political  status  —  to  be  no  more 
"  natural "  than  the  division  between  the  different 
classes  of  men  was  rightly  or  wrongly  supposed  by 
them  to  be.  The  difference  between  a  peer  and  a 
commoner  is  not  natural — the  difference  between  a 
peer  and  a  peeress  is  natural. 

And  so  we  can  leave  out  of  account  altogether 
the  question  of  whether  dead  and  gone  people  were 
right  or  wrong  in  their  idea  of  what  was  natural,  or 
whether  Mill  himself  used  the  term  in  an  ambiguous  or 
equivocal  sense.  But  taking  things  as  they  are  and  as 
we  ourselves  interpret  them,  we  say  that  whilst  the 
gulf  between  serfs  and  seigneurs  may  have  appeared 
"natural  "  to  them  whereas  it  was  only  customary,  the 
gulf  between  men  and  women  is  natural  in  the  true 
and  proper  sense  of  the  word,  as  meaning  that  it 
belongs  inherently  to  created  beings.  So  it  is  not 
because  we  defend  the  subjection  of  women  as 
"  natural  "  that  we  can  say  his  analogy  is  false,  but  we 
say  that  his  analogy  is  false  because  it  is  made  between 
two  totally  different  entities — made,  that  is  to  say, 
between  (i)  serfs  and  seigneurs,  whose  differences  are 
arbitrary,  amd  "  natural  "  only  in  the  loose  sense  of  the 
word,  and  (2)  men  and  women,  whose  differences  are 
not  arbitrary  at  all,  but  are  natural  in  the  right  and 
proper  sense  of  the  word. 


210  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


And  the  false  analogy  is  constantly  appearing  ;  as, 
for  instance,  in  the  following  passage  :  "  The  social 
subordination  of  women  thus  stands  out  an  isolated 
fact  in  modern  institutions.  .  .  .  This  entire  discrep- 
ancy between  the  social  fact  and  all  those  which 
accompany  it  .  .  .  should  at  least  suffice  to  make  this, 
like  the  choice  between  republicanism  and  royalty,  a 
balanced  question."  But  there  is  no  choice  between 
being  a  man  and  being  a  woman.  Men  and  women, 
moreover,  may  exist  in  the  same  state,  but  republican- 
ism and  royalty  cannot.  Men  and  women  together 
make  the  human  race,  but  republicanism  and  royalty 
together  make  nothing — except,  perhaps,  the  happy 
compromise  of  our  own  constitutional  monarchy.  But 
they  are  in  their  essence  opposed  things,  and  mutually 
exclusive,  and  men  and  women  are  complementary 
things,  mutually  interdependent. 

The  Uniqueness 
of  the  Human  Sex. 

But  if  you  regard  women  as  one  class  and  men  as 
another,  each  struggling  against  the  other  in  the 
political  and  social  world,  with  diverging  interests  and 
not  common  interests,  rivals  and  competitors  and 
equals  in  the  struggle  for  life,  interchangeable  parts 
in  the  social  mechanism,  so  that  a  woman  may  become 
a  man  just  as  easily  as  a  monarchy  can  become  a 
republic,  or  a  serf  become  a  freeman,  then  it  is  not 
a  difficult  task  in  logic  to  establish  the  case  that  there 
should  be,  in  justice,  the  same  precise  and  actual 
equality  between  the  two  "  classes  "  of  men  and  women 
as  had  been  obtained  in  the  other  classes.  But  men 
and  women  are  not  classes — they  are  sexes,  the  two 
halves  of  a  whole,  and  the  logic  that  might  be  in- 
vincible when  applied  to  class  breaks  down  altogether 
when  you  apply  it  to  sex,  for  there  is  no  analogy 
possible  between  them.  The  relations  between  man 
and  woman  are  not  political  or  even  social — they  are 
personal  in  the  highest  degree  and  in  a  kind  that  exists 
in  no  other  relation  of  life  whatever.    And  no  analogy 


THE  SUFFRAGIST' S  BIBLE    2 1 1 


whatever  is  possible  between  men  and  women  and 
serfs  and  seigneurs — to  try  to  establish  one  is  almost 
like  saying  that  as  the  birds  of  the  air  are  free,  there 
should  be  no  government  on  earth.  And  the  idea, 
which  he  elsewhere  expresses,  that  men  and  women 
are  "  broadly  distinguished  "  because  men  and  women 
have  occupied  the  relations  of  seigneurs  and  serfs  and 
patricians  and  plebeians,  is  as  fantastic  as  any  notion 
that  ever  proceeded  from  the  human  brain. 

And  the  whole  basis  of  his  position,  in  respect  of 
woman's  status  domestically  or  politically,  rests  en- 
tirely upon  his  first  assumption  that  the  human  sex 
relationship  is  just  like  any  other  human  relationship, 
either  between  classes  or  between  individuals  of  the 
same  sex ;  and  that  it  can  be  compared  to  kingships 
and  republics,  sovereigns  and  subjects,  conquerors  and 
conquered,  slaves  and  slave-owners.  But  the  relation- 
ship between  the  human  sexes  is  really  unlike  any- 
thing else  on  earth — it  is  useless  to  compare  it  either 
with  the  relationship  of  the  classes  into  which  men 
have  divided  themselves,  or  of  the  sexes  into  which 
Nature  has  divided  the  lower  animals.  For  men  and 
women  are  not  the  artificial  products  of  class  differen- 
tiation ;  and  they  are  not  merely  the  male  and  female 
of  a  certain  animal  species.  They  are  naturally  and 
unarbitrarily  created,  as  against  the  first  and  artificial 
distinction  :  and  they  are  human — with  all  that  that 
implies — against  the  other.  In  fact,  no  analogy  in 
the  wide  universe  is  possible  with  man  and  woman. 
The  human  sex  stands  absolutely  by  itself,  a  thing 
apart,  to  be  judged  only  by  the  circumstances  sur- 
rounding it.  and  not  by  any  analogy  drawn  from  any 
source  or  phenomenon  under  the  sun. 

A  Rival  Analogy. 

And  it  is  just  because  Mill  ignored  that  entirely 
fundamental  fact  of  the  uniqueness  of  the  thing  he 
compares  with  all  sorts  of  unlike  things,  that  his  mag- 
nificent logic  and  his  sometimes  beautiful  but  often 
pedantic  English  and  his  wonderful  learning,  and  his 


212 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


passion  for  justice  for  justice's  sake,  are  all  useless. 
If  you  compare  man  with  aristocracy,  and  woman 
with  democracy,  or  reverse  the  process,  you  can  do 
something  of  what  Mill  did — making  the  proper  allow- 
ance for  difference  in  talents.  But  you  will  have  been 
arguing  vainly.  How  can  the  relations  between 
woman  and  man  be  adjusted  on  any  lines  or  prin- 
ciples applicable  to  any  other  sphere  or  relation  of 
life  ?  How  can  a  man  argue  from  the  relations 
between  master  and  slave  or  king  and  subject  what 
principle  of  conduct  should  govern  his  relations  to  a 
being  who  fills  such  a  place  in  his  life  as  woman  does — 
to  a  being  who  fills  the  dreams  of  his  youth,  and  in- 
spires his  manhood,  and  shares  his  bed,  and  at  whose 
side  he  wishes  to  lie  when  both  come  to  their  eternal 
sleep? — or  who,  on  the  other  hand,  fills  his  life  with 
the  torments  of  the  damned  because  she  drinks  like  a 
fish  and  pawns  his  clothes  ? 

We  can  see  clearl\'  enough  why  and  where  Mill's 
analogy  was  false  if  we  only  consider  that  he  omitted 
one  other  and  very  important  and  human  relationship, 
that  of  employer  and  employed.  You  cannot  say 
that  the  relations  of  employer  and  employed  are 
analogous  to  those  of  a  government  and  the  governed, 
or  are  to  be  decided  by  any  analogies  drawn  from  the 
political  relations  of  men.  For  a  totally  different  set 
of  considerations  arises  when  you  are  dealing  with 
employers  in  relation  to  employed  than  when  you 
are  dealing  with  the  relation  of  a  man  to  the  State, 
or  of  a  slave  to  his  owner.  We  should  think  it  absurd 
to  say  that  because  a  monarchical  State  was  trans- 
formed by  the  people  into  a  republic  that  therefore 
an  industry  should  be  transformed  by  the  employed 
into  a  co-operative  society.  It  might  or  might  not 
be  the  right  thing  to  do,  but  the  republic  and  monarchy 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  But  if  we  can  see 
the  falseness  of  the  analogy  there,  how  much  greater 
is  the  fallacy  in  deciding  that  the  relations  between 
man  and  woman  should  be  guided  by  any  evidence  or 
experience  drawn  from  the  political  warfare  or  changes 


THE  SUFFRAGIST'S  BIBLE  213 


made  in  the  artificially  distinguished  classes  of  men, 
or  the  industrial  relations  of  employers  and  employed  ? 
It  may  be  right  or  wrong  that  there  should  be  no 
employed  or  employers  at  all — it  may  be  right  or 
wrong  that  the  relations  between  employers  and  em- 
ployed should  be  so  transformed  that  the  employed 
should  become  the  employers,  or  something  in  between, 
and  neither  the  one  thing  nor  the  other.  But  you 
cannot  talk  of  man  and  woman  in  terms  of  government 
and  people,  class  and  class,  slave  and  slave-owner,  any 
more  than  of  employer  and  employed.  The  employer 
may  become  an  employee,  and  the  employed  employ 
him  ;  or  the  serf  may  become  a  seigneur,  or  a  plebeian 
become  a  patrician  and  buy  his  former  patron  up.  But 
a  woman  cannot  become  a  man,  and  the  sexes  cannot 
so  transform  themselves  that  they  become  neither  the 
one  thing  nor  the  other — at  any  rate  one  sincerely 
hopes  not,  though  we  shall  see  later  that  something 
like  that  is  going  to  be  attempted.  And  so  when 
analogies  are  drawn  from  any  source  whatever  to  fix 
the  relations  between  man  and  woman,  they  must  be 
false  analogies  ;  and  any  logic  or  noble  pleading  based 
upon  a  false  analogy  must  lead  to  a  false  conclusion. 
And  that  is  exactly  what  Mill's  "  Subjection  of 
Women  "  leads  to.  It  is  vitiated  at  its  very  source 
by  an  imperfect  and  false  notion  of  what  men  and 
women  really  are,  and  it  is  a  masterpiece  ot  self 
delusion. 

"  Merely  Physical  Strength." 

One  final  consideration  will  help  us  to  realise  how 
partially  and  incompletely  Mill  viewed  the  whole 
problem.  Only  once,  I  think,  does  he  refer  directly 
to  man's  physical  superiority  over  woman.  It  may 
have  been  his  caution,  or  it  may  have  been  his 
oversight  that  explained  the  omission,  but  in  any  case 
by  refraining  from  dwelling  upon  it  he  avoided  the 
difficulty  that  presented  itself  to  him  on  his  realising 
that  though  classes  and  forms  of  government  have 
changed  because  of  the  transference  of  physical  power 


214  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


from  one  class  to  another,  the  transference  of  physical 
superiority  from  man  to  woman  is,  so  far  as  we  can 
humanly  foresee,  impossible.  And  that  fact  alone — 
all  false  analogies  apart — places  the  relation  of  man 
and  woman  in  a  different  category  from  any  of  the 
other  relations  he  was  considering. 

Moreover,  he  avoided,  and  perhaps  deliberately, 
paying  any  regard  to  the  far-reaching  effects  produced 
by  the  physical  differences  between  men  and  women 
with  all  their  consequences  near  and  remote.  And  the 
one  direct  reference  he  made  to  man's  physical 
superiority  as  being  a  distinguishing  fact  of  sex,  is 
when  he  admitted  that  woman  has  produced  no  work 
"  in  philosophy,  science,  or  art  entitled  to  the  first 
rank."  He  then  says  :  "  Let  us  take  the  only  marked 
case  of  apparent  inferiority  of  women  to  men,  if  we 
except  the  merely  physical  one  of  bodily  strength." 
That  word  "  merely,"  applied  to  a  fundamental  and 
unalterable  fact  of  sex,  reveals  the  theorist  but  almost 
conceals  the  thinker.  And  it  is  indeed  an  amazing 
thing  that  Mill  apparently  saw  no  application,  purpose, 
or  function  in  man's  physical  superiority  over  woman 
than  for  him  to  use  it  as  a  domestic  tyrant.  Of  the 
part  played  by  man's  physical  nature  in  relation  to  the 
State  he  either  perceived  nothing  or  suppressed  the 
expression  of  what  he  saw  because  it  would  have 
destroyed  the  symmetry  of  his  logic,  and  toppled  the 
structure  over. 

Yet  it  was  perhaps  natural  that  a  man  who  "  was 
never  a  boy  "  and  who  never  played  a  game  should 
underestimate  both  the  virtue  and  the  consequences  of 
physical  strength.  And  it  was  perhaps  natural  that 
one  whose  closeted  mind  was  inflamed  with  a  sense  of 
the  beauty  of  abstract  justice  should  see  in  man's 
physical  superiority  over  woman  no  purpose  beyond 
that  of  making  him,  not  the  defender  and  protector  of 
■'Oman,  but  her  tyrant  and  bully. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


Suffragist  And  Feminist. 

VOTES  AND  WAGES — POLITICAL  IMPOTENCE  IN  ECO- 
NOMICS—  THE  CASE  SUMMARISED— CONTEMPT  OF 
MAN  —  THE  RACE  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL  —  THE 
POLITICAL  WOMAN  —  THE  MATERNAL  SUFFRAGIST  — 
THE  LOGICAL  SUFFRAGIST — WAGES  FOR  WIVES. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


Suffragist  And  Feminist. 

I  HAVE  heard  Suffragists  addressing  factory  girls  on 
their  grievances,  and  promising  them  that  when  they 
had  the  vote  they  would  have  no  need  to  strike,  for 
they  would  be  able  to  compel  their  employers  to  pay 
them  fair  wages.  And  this  possibility  of  the  Vote 
being  used  as  an  instrument  for  economic  advantage 
commended  itself  warmly  to  a  lady  of  my  acquaintance, 
until  it  was  pointed  out  to  her  that  domestic  servants, 
too,  would  of  course  have  the  same  power  of  dictating 
hours  of  labour  and  of  rest  and  a  minimum  wage. 
And  then,  after  making  a  not  quite  successful  effort  to 
accommodate  herself  to  that  shock,  she  told  me  that,  of 
course,  "  the  domestic  sphere  and  the  economic  sphere 
were  not  the  same  thing."  And,  except  for  the 
specialists  to  be  found  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  this 
controversy,  that  loose  way  of  thinking  and  of  ex- 
pression is  characteristic  of  the  political-minded 
woman.  She  wants  to  be  politically  emanicipated 
before  she  has  emanicipated  herself  from  a  hundred 
prejudices  and  imperfections  of  reasoning. 

Votes  and  Wages. 

But  Suffragists  who  tell  factory  girls  that  votes  will 
raise  their  wages  are  already  giving  evidence  that  when 
they  come  to  enter  political  life  they  will  be  very  apt 
at  "  the  game."  For,  of  course,  votes  cannot  and  do  not 
raise  anybody's  wages.  That  is,  as  things  are.  In  the 
time  to  come,  perhaps,  when  the  State  is  the  chief 
employer,  and  each  employee  is  a  voter,  then  votes 
may  have  the  directest  possible  relation  to  wages,  and 
the  fortunate  electorate  will  be  able  to  vote  itself,  by  a 
judicious  selection  of  its  parliamentary  representatives, 
p  217 


2l8 


WOMAN  ADEIFT 


successive  increases  in  salary  and  wages.  But  even 
that  process  would  not  be  capable  of  being  carried 
too  far,  for  when  it  had  gone  far  enough  to  point  to  the 
danger  of  national  bankruptcy,  through  a  defiance  of 
economic  law,  it  might  be  found  necessary  to  deprive 
of  votes  all  that  portion  of  the  electorate  which  stood 
in  the  happy  position  of  being  able  to  vote  its  own 
emoluments  out  of  somebody  else's  pocket.  For  the 
State  is  not  a  miraculous  body,  intervening  to  catch 
manna  from  heaven  and  then  showering  it  on  the 
people.  The  State  is  merely  a  collection  of  mundane 
taxpayers — in  other  words,  one's  neighbours  and 
fellows — and  in  other  words  again,  the  State  is  merely 
Somebody  Else. 

But  that  time  is  not  yet,  and  as  things  are  it  is 
perfectly  true  to  say  that  votes  cannot  and  do  not  raise 
anybody's  wages.  Or,  making  the  utmost  allowance 
for  the  little  truth  there  can  be  in  the  statement  that 
votes  can  raise  wages,  we  may  say  that  the  relation 
between  votes  and  wages  is  so  remote  and  that  the  two 
things  are  separated  by  so  many  other  and  more  im- 
mediate factors,  that  in  no  honest  use  of  language 
can  it  be  said  that  there  is  any  connection  whatever 
between  the  two. 

The  reason  is  simple  :  wages  depend  upon  advantage 
of  bargaining,  and  that  depends  upon  other  considera- 
tions. But  wages  do  not  depend  upon  the  wishes 
of  voters,  and  not  even  upon  the  wishes  of  Parliament. 
To  wish  and  to  will  are  two  different  things,  and  even 
if  Parliament  ordered  that  the  wages  of  all  factory  girls 
from  this  time  henceforth  should  be  doubled,  the 
parliamentary  edict  would  be  just  as  invalid  and  im- 
potent as  though  Parliament  were  to  order,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  every  factory  girl  should  buy  two  hats 
where  now  she  buys  one,  to  encourage  the  millinery 
trade  or  to  develop  ostrich  farming  in  South  Africa. 
Even  Parliament  is  potent  only  so  long  as  it  can 
enforce  its  decrees,  and  the  vote  of  a  Bermondsey 
factory  girl  would  no  more  raise  her  wages  than  my 
opinion  that  womanhood  would  be  all  the  better  if 


SUFFBAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  219 


it  were  uncursed  by  the  factory  system  altogether,  will 
lead  to  a  single  factory  girl  the  less  being  employed. 

Political  Impotence 
in  Economics. 

If  those  who  say  that  women's  votes  would  raise 
women's  wages  could  point  to  a  single  instance  in 
which  the  voting  power  of  men  had  raised  men's  wages, 
there  might  be  something  to  answer.  But,  as  it 
happens,  not  only  can  we  defy  them  to  prove  the 
positive  statement,  but  we  can  even  go  a  long  way 
towards  proving  the  negative  statement  that  what  they 
say  is  not  true,  and  to  prove  a  negative  is  not  usually 
possible.  More  women  are  employed  in  domestic 
pursuits  than  industrially,  and  a  more  scattered  lot 
of  workers  cannot  be  imagined.  Union,  which  is  the 
chief  direct  factor  in  raising  wages,  is  almost  denied  to 
them,  and  yet  their  wages  and  conditions  of  service 
have  enormously  improved,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
more  domestic  servants  are  sought  than  there  are  girls 
who  come  forward  to  be  engaged  ;  and  so  a  domestic 
servant  holds  a  bargaining  ground  which  gives  her 
an  advantage  over  her  prospective  employer,  and  her 
wages  have  been  bettered  solely  because  of  that  advan- 
tage, which  has  come  to  her  by  the  development  of 
female  factory  labour  absorbing  thousands  of  girls  who 
would  otherwise  be  her  rivals  and  competitors  in 
obtaining  domestic  places.  That  fact,  of  the  improve- 
ment in  the  wages  of  domestic  servants,  proves  that 
whether  votes  can  influence  wages  or  not,  a  rise  in 
wages  has  no  dependence  upon  a  vote,  as  every 
organised  industry  amongst  men  has  shewn.  But 
we  can  go  further  than  that. 

Not  only  have  workmen  got  votes,  but  they  have  got 
representatives  in  Parliament.  And  when,  in  the 
summer  of  191 1,  dockers  and  railwaymen  were 
striking  all  over  the  country,  their  representatives  in 
Parliament  had  no  more  to  do  with  the  striking  move- 
ment, as  parliamentarians,  than  they  had  to  do  with 
that  summer's  heat  wave.    The  movement  swept  by 


220 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


the  Labour  Party  altogether,  leaving  them  to  vindicate 

their  existence  and  to  hang  on  to  the  skirts  of  the 
outside  movement,  bymaking  parliamentary  speeches 
that  did  not  affect  the  situation  one  way  or  the  other 
and  by  being  complimentarily  called  into  the  negoti- 
ations when  the  negotiations  began.  And  the  rise 
in  wages  since  conceded  by  various  railway  companies 
had  no  more  to  do  with  the  fact  that  their  employees 
had  votes  than  with  the  fact  that  they  had  hats. 
Indeed,  the  whole  economic  uprising  of  that  summer 
showed  very  vividly  not  only  the  power  behind  the  vote 
in  one  direction,  but  the  power  apart  from  the  vote 
in  another  direction,  that  men  possess.  If  any 
Suffragist  had,  in  that  turbulent  week,  told  a  docker 
that  his  vote  would  in  time  raise  his  wages,  I  fear 
the  docker  would  have  told  the  Suffragist  to  go  quite 
out  of  sight. 

And  if  it  be  true  that  even  those  men  who  have 
votes,  and  who  not  only  have  votes,  but  a  whole  Party 
in  Parliament  to  look  after  their  interests,  got  their  rise 
in  wages  by  disdaining  parliamentary  influence  alto- 
gether, then  I  think  we  have  proved  the  negative,  so 
far  as  a  negative  can  be  proved,  to  the  statement  that 
votes  can  raise  wages. 

But  we  may  carry  the  point  even  a  little  further  yet 
— though,  to  be  sure,  it  is  all  a  very  elementary  matter, 
and  worth  attention  only  because  Suffragist  arguments 
must  be  answered.  If  votes  can  raise  wages,  through 
Parliament — and  they  cannot  raise  them  through  any 
other  institution — then  votes  and  parliamentary  power 
ought  to  be  able  to  lower  wages.  Now,  the  composition 
of  Parliament  since  the  rise  of  the  modern  industrial 
system  has  been,  until  the  last  few  years  exclusively, 
and  during  the  last  few  years  predominantly,  drawn 
from  the  capitalistic  class,  those  who  pay  wages  and 
not  those  who  receive  them.  The  capitalistic  and 
allied  classes  not  only  have  had  the  votes  of  the  people 
in  their  pockets,  but  they  have  controlled  and  still 
control  every  avenue  of  administration.  Yet  the  rise 
in  workers'  wages  which  began   in   the   fifties  has 


SUFFRAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  221 


taken  place  entirely  in  defiance  of  that  parliamentary 
power  which,  if  votes  can  affect  wages  at  all,  would 
at  least  have  kept  them  down.  And  so  when  we 
consider  that  not  only  have  votes  nothing  to  do 
with  wages,  but  that  only  one  woman  in  five  is  affected 
by  the  industrial  system,  and  that  they  are  affected 
only  during  a  certain  period  of  their  lives,  any 
argument  that  all  women  should  have  votes  because 
of  a  remote  possibility  (amounting  to  something  just 
more  than  nothing)  that  a  few  might  raise  their  wages, 
disappears  as  a  serious  consideration  altogether. 

The  Case  Summarised. 

And  if  that  were  all  that  had  to  be  said  about  the 
economic  position  of  women  in  regard  to  the  vote,  that 
is  all  I  should  have  to  say.  But  there  is  a  good 
deal  more  to  be  said.  Hitherto,  we  have  been  on 
the  defensive,  and  now  we  come  to  the  attack.  The 
defence  has  carried  us  far,  but  that  is  because  there 
is  so  much  more  in  the  question  than  either  Suffragists 
or  influential  politicians  seem  to  think.  And  perhaps, 
before  continuing  to  consider  the  economic  hopes  of 
women,  it  will  be  as  well  briefly  to  summarise  here 
those  considerations  against  the  Suffrage  which  I  have 
urged.    I  have  endeavoured  to  prove  : 

(1)  That  this  vast  question  has  escaped  even  the  benefits  of  the 
party  system  ;  that  as  the  electorate  is  now  only  educated  on  bi^ 
political  issues  by  the  warfare  of  party  organisations,  the  elec- 
torate has  practically  received  no  education  whatever  upon  this 
huge  matter  ;  and  that  the  intelligent  discussion  of  it  on  any 
democratic  scale  has  even  yet  to  begin  ;  and  further  that  if  any 
Parliament  were  debarred  from  passing  any  prime  measure  over 
the  heads  of  the  people,  it  is  a  Parliament  that  owes  its  existence 
and  all  its  moral  justification  to  respect  for  the  will  of  the  people. 

(2)  That  the  idea  that  the  question  can  be  settled  by  a  mere 
reference  to  the  democratic  principle  can  only  be  maintained  if 
we  attach  more  importance  to  the  name  of  a  thing  than  to  its 
consequences  ;  and  that  the  question  of  Votes  for  Women  has 
more  depth  and  importance  than  attaches  merely  to  an  increase 
of  the  number  of  people  exercising  the  franchise. 

(3)  That  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  natural  right  to  a  vote,  and 


222  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


that  as  Mill  admitted:  "The  decision  on  this,  as  on  any  of  the 

other  social  arrangements  of  mankind,  depends  on  what  an  en- 
lightened estimate  of  tendencies  and  consequences  may  show  to  be 
most  advantageous  to  humanity  in  general,  ivithout  distinction 
of  sex." 

(4)  That  the  physical  differences  between  man  and  woman  are 
far-reaching,  and  not  superficial  differences  ;  for  they  delimit  the 
spheres  of  man  and  woman,  and  extend  so  far  as  to  make  woman 
unnecessary  to  the  governing  State,  either  to  control  or  to  up- 
hold it ;  and  to  rule  her,  as  a  necessity,  out  of  the  active  com- 
munity, except  in  regard  to  functions  of  a  domestic  character 
carried  into  the  outer  world  outside  the  home. 

(5)  That  "Votes  for  Women  "■  would  not  merely  mean  women 
actmg  as  voters,  but  permeating  every  department  of  the  State, 
legislative  and  administrative. 

(6)  That  a  vote  is  not  merely  an  opinion,  but  an  opinion  to  be 
enforced  ;  and  that  the  effective  enforcement  of  the  will  of  gov- 
ernment depends  absolutely  upon  the  physical  forces  at  the 
disposal  of  government,  and  those  physical  forces  are  male  and 
not  female. 

(7)  That  the  fact  of  a  woman  paying  taxes  gives  her  no  right 
whatever  to  a  vote  ;  and  that  the  question  of  whether  she  shall 
have  a  vote  at  all  is  narrowed  down  to  considering  whether  any 
reasons  for  giving  her  the  vote  as  an  act  of  grace  are  counter- 
balanced by  reasons  which  make  the  concession  inexpedient. 

(8)  That  many  more  women  object  to  the  Suffrage  being  given 
than  there  are  women  who  want  it. 

(9)  That  those  who  object  to  the  vote  being  given  are  not  in- 
fluenced by  any  considerations  of  woman's  "inferiority"  what- 
ever, except  her  i-nferiority  as  a  political  factor  in  the  State  ;  that 
her  superior  moral  qualities  are  seen  at  their  best  in  the  sphere 
which  politics  do  not  touch  ;  and  that  in  the  political  sphere  those 
qualities  might  even  be  dangerous,  whilst  she  could  only  develop 
"  public  virtues  "  at  the  expense  of  domestic  virtues  vastly  more 
important  to  the  social  well-being  than  the  acquirement  of  a 
political  aptitude  which  the  State  does  not  need  in  her. 

(10)  That  the  most  perfectly  developed  State  would  be  one 
not  in  which  woman  was  a  political  and  industrial  factor  just  like 
man,  but  one  in  which  the  domestic  functions  of  women  were 
developed  to  their  highest  pitch  under  the  shelter  of  a  social  and 
political  organisation  which  reduced  domestic  material  cares  and 
anxieties  to  a  minimum. 

(11)  That  if  woman  is  to  be  regenerated,  she  must  be  born 
again  in  her  own  likeness  ;  that  man  and  woman  are  the  two 
halves  of  a  whole ;  that  the  whole  is  the  human  being,  and  that 
true  biological  development  is  to  be  secured  not  by  woman 
imitating  man,  but  perfecting  herself. 


SUFFRAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  223 


(12)  That  the  present  exclusion  of  woman  from  political  power 
imposes  no  injustice  upon  her,  for  man-made  laws  are  just  to 
her,  and  the  laws  are  administered  by  men  in  a  spirit  not  of  bare 
sexless  justice,  but  with  a  conscious  and  specific  consideration 
of  the  difference  between  the  sexes. 

(13)  That  in  general  life  man  gives  a  preferential  and  deferen- 
tial consideration  to  women  in  a  spirit  of  chivalry  which  is  the 
expression  of  a  realised  obligation  from  the  strong  to  the  weak  ; 
but  that  m  the  effort  to  attain  "  equality"  with  man  woman  would 
have  to  surrender  that  consideration  which  is  incompatible  with 
the  relations  between  equals. 

(14)  That  men  and  women  are  not  comparable  with  any 
divisions  of  classes  or  political  institutions,  or  anything  else  in 
the  whole  world  ;  but  that  the  human  sex  stands  by  itself,  a 
unique  thing  defying  any  analogy  whatever. 

And  now  we  have  to  come  to  closer  quarters  with  the 
real  aims  and  ambitions  of  the  woman's  movement, 
and  it  will  not  take  so  long  to  show  that  the  movement 
will  jDroduce  social  anarchy  and  the  degradation  of 
woman  as  it  has  taken  to  show  that  "  Votes  for 
Women  "  has,  at  any  rate,  no  millennial  mission  to 
accomplish. 

Contempt  of  Man. 

At  the  bottom  of  every  revolution  is  an  underlying 
idea  that  is  not  apprehended  even  by  all  the  revolution- 
aries. And  the  underlying  idea  of  the  Woman 
Suffrage  movement  is  a  disrespect  for  man,  amounting 
in  the  worst  cases  to  real  androphobia.  Different 
causes  may  account  for  the  sex-hatred  in  individual 
cases,  and  probably  the  process  by  which  it  has  come 
about  is  not  clear  even  to  its  victims.  And  there  may 
be  more  than  one  general  cause.  For  instance,  the 
male  "Futurists"  hold  that  man  has  paid  too  much 
court  to  women,  too  much  deference,  and  far  too  much 
attention  for  the  good  of  his  work.  And  there  may 
be  some  truth  in  that  view,  but  it  is  really  only  the 
recoil  to  decadence  from  an  excessive  amorousness. 
It  may  be  true  among  the  Latin  races,  but  it  is  not 
true  among  the  Teutonic  and  northern  races.  Still,  it 
may  be  that  that  recoil  to  decadence  among  male 


224 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


"  Futurists "  has  now  its  counterpart  in  a  decadence 
among  women  which  is  expressed  by  their  disrespect 
of  man,  and  there  are  marked  tendencies  of  our  present 
social  system  which  are  producing  what  can  only  be 
called  temperamental  neuters.  Indeed,  some  Feminists 
like  Mrs  Gilman,  frankly  contend  that  men  and 
women  are  over-sexed,  and  apparently  desire  to  see  a 
race  of  men  and  women  who  will  take  only  a  tepid  and 
academic  interest  in  each  other  ;  whilst  of  other 
Feminists  it  can  only  be  said  that  they  err  in  a  contrary 
direction,  though  their  mistake  will  lead  to  the  same 
end,  for  when  sexual  matters  are  discussed  ad  nauseam, 
nausea  naturally  follows.  Normal  men  and  women 
are  unaffected  by  these  tendencies.  Normal  men  love, 
and  they  work  too,  and  they  strive  to  keep  the  family 
in  comfort,  and  they  shudder  at  the  thought  of  leaving 
those  dependent  upon  them  in  want.  And  the  normal 
woman  looks  upon  her  home  as  her  little  kingdom, 
looks  up  to  her  husband  with  respect,  looks  upon 
her  children  with  affection,  bears  troubles  as  best  she 
may,  and  is  still  happy  if  it  can  be  said  of  her,  "  And 
her  children  rise  up  and  call  her  blessed.  Her  husband 
also,  and  he  praiseth  her." 

Now  the  difference  between  that  type  of  woman  and 
the  woman  who  has  no  respect  for  man  is  almost  as 
great  as  the  difference  between  the  two  sexes — just 
as  the  difference  between  the  decadent  "Futurists" 
and  the  normal  man  is  as  great  as  the  difference 
between  normal  man  and  woman.  And  the  struggle 
now  going  on  is  not  really  whether  woman  shall  have  a 
vote  or  not  so  much  as  which  type  of  womanhood  shall 
prevail. 

The  Race  and 
the  Individual. 

It  is  not  only  man,  however,  that  is  held  in  dis- 
esteem,  it  is,  by  a  natural  extension,  the  Home  as  well. 
Those  to  whom  home  life  and  the  domestic  virtues 
offer  no  attraction  are  quite  right  to  rebel  against  a 
:ilale  of  society  which  makes  home  life  and  the  domestic 


SUFFEAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  225 

virtues  of  more  account  than  the  individual  disHke 
of  them.  It  is  all,  in  fact,  a  struggle  between  the  race- 
type  and  the  revolting  individual,  between  the  woman 
who,  blindly  it  may  be,  conforms  her  life  to  Nature  s 
intentions,  and  the  woman  who,  a  rebel  against  her  lot, 
wishes  to  consult  absolutely  her  own  individual  in- 
terests, as  she  conceives  them,  and  who  joins  a 
movement  designed  to  impose  her  own  view  of  woman 
and  life  upon  all  other  women.  The  modern  Suffragist 
of  the  advanced  type  is  really  the  incarnation  of  Ibsen's 
heroine-type :  the  woman  who  "  wants  to  live  her  own 
life,"  who  insists  that  "  her  first  duty  is  to  herself,"  and 
to  whom,  consequently,  nobody  else  owes  any  first 
duty  either.  Now  there  is  really  no  reason  to  look 
with  contempt  upon  women  who  take  these  views.  A 
woman  is  perfectly  entitled  to  take  that  view  of 
woman's  life,  just  as  a  man  is  entitled  to  live  a  life 
of  selfish  cynicism  about  women,  whilst  taking  his 
pleasures  where  he  can  find  them — though  the  bachelor 
is  not,  of  course,  by  any  means  the  counterpart  of  the 
extreme  Suffragist.  But  the  thing  that  concerns  those 
men  and  women  who  have  not  arrived  at  that  point  of 
de-civilisation  and  of  decadence  from  a  normal  social 
standard,  is  merely  to  take  very  good  care  indeed  that 
we  do  not  upset  the  whole  social  balance  for  the  sake 
of  gratifying  those  who  reject  our  general  social 
standard,  so  far  as  the  relations  between  men  and 
women  are  concerned — relations  not  involving  them 
merely,  but  the  Home  as  an  institution  of  our  very 
social  life. 

But  you  may  say,  "  Oh,  in  a  struggle  between  what 
the  race  demands  and  what  the  individual  demands, 
the  race  is  bound  to  win."  So  it  will,  and  must,  if  we 
only  let  well  alone,  or  try  to  improve  it  without  making 
things  worse.  For  naturally  those  women  who  are 
least  attracted  by  husbands  and  babies  will  be  least 
likely  to  have  either,  and  therefore  in  the  course  of 
a  generation  or  two  the  problem  might  largely  solve 
itself,  for  any  type  which  does  not  reproduce  its  kind 
naturally  disappears. 


226  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


But  where  the  danger  lies  is  that  many  right- 
meaning  but  undiscerning  people  may  mistake  the 
revolt  of  the  abnormal  woman  as  the  signal  of  "  pro- 
gress," whereas  it  is  really  the  signal  for  retrogression 
and  the  sign  of  decadence  ;  and  they  may  be  led 
to  give  a  sentimental  assent  to  all  those  tendencies 
which,  if  they  recognised  them,  they  would  most  abhor. 
For  I  need  hardly  say  that  the  effect  of  an  assent 
to  the  ultimate  aim  of  the  woman's  movement,  and 
the  cultivation  of  every  activity  by  woman  which 
would  lead  her  away  from  the  home,  would  in  the  long 
run  have  its  effect  on  the  race.  Empires  have  fallen, 
and  races  may  decay.  And  so  it  is  no  use  relying 
on  Nature  to  correct  our  mistakes — the  thing  to  do  is 
to  look  where  we  are  going,  and  not  to  make  the 
mistake  to  begin  with. 

The  Political  Woman. 

But  it  will  be  said,  and  truly,  that  all  Suffragists 
are  not  contemptuous  of  men,  and  England,  home  and 
duty.  Far  from  it,  but  that  is  because  they  are  assent- 
ing to  what  they  do  not  understand.  Women 
Suffragists  constantly  refer  to  the  "  noble  mission  of 
womanhood,"  its  high  maternal  duties,  and  so  forth  ; 
but  what  they  don't  apparently  see  is  that  the  move- 
ment they  are  assisting  is  one  which  snaps  its  fingers 
at  the  whole  mission  of  womanhood  and  the  sacred 
maternal  duties.  The  Suffragists  who  know  where  they 
are  going  and  where  they  want  to  go  do  not  care  a  fig 
for  such  old  fashioned  twaddle,  and  I  verily  believe 
that  if  Madame  Adelina  Patti — even  if  the  gods  could 
send  her  back  to  her  glorious  prime — were  to  sing 
"  Home,  Sweet  Home  !  "  to  a  gathering  of  the  most 
forward  school  of  Suffragism,  she  would  get  hissed  for 
her  pains.  And  from  their  point  of  view  they  would  be 
quite  right.  That  infinitely  beautiful  ballad  represents, 
in  the  essence  of  its  sentiment,  all  that  they  stand  out 
against  :  the  dominion  of  home  interests  over  the  lives 
of  women.  But  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  do 
not  regard  home  interests  and  the  family  affections  as 


SUFFRAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  227 


the  survival  of  a  barbaric  age,  lingering  on  into  the 
beginning  of  a  more  enlightened  time,  there  can  be 
no  compiomise  whatever  with  the  other  view  of  a 
woman's  life.  And,  apparently,  the  real  nature  of  "the 
cause,"  this  antagonism  between  two  types  of  woman,  is 
imperfectly  appreciated  and  perhaps  not  even  under- 
stood, by  the  old  guard  of  Suffragists,  or  even  by  the 
more  modern  type  of  Suffragist  who  has  become  one 
through  associating  with  Liberal  Federations  and  other 
political  organisations. 

In  one  way  this  eruption  of  political  woman  serves 
man  very  well  right.  As  soon  as  the  franchise  was 
extended  in  1884  the  Conservatives  said  to  themselves, 
"  Now  we  shall  have  to  talk  another  language  alto- 
gether. Here  is  Hodge,  poor  devil,  who  hasn't  got  an 
idea  in  his  head,  and  upon  my  word  I  shan't  know  how 
on  earth  to  talk  to  him  ! "  And  then,  upon  their 
remembering  Georgiana  Duchess  of  Devonshire's  kiss 
to  the  butcher  at  Westminister,  the  Primrose  League 
was  incubated  and  the  Primrose  Dame  arose  in  the 
land,  and  tea-parties,  cocoa-nut  shies,  and  merry-go- 
rounds,  came  along  to  beguile  Hodge  into  thinking 
that  the  Conservative  cause  was  a  primrose  path.  The 
Liberals,  instead  of  leaving  democracy — if  it  were 
worth  its  salt — to  take  the  circuses  for  what  they  were 
worth,  a  jolly  good  afternoon's  amusement,  could  not 
trust  Hodge  to  vote  straight  if  he  were  amused, 
although  they  said  he  was  sufficiently  instructed  to 
have  the  vote  ;  and  so  they  called  in  the  Woman 
Liberal  to  redress  the  balance  of  the  Primrose  Dame. 
And  so  it  serves  man  right  for  his  treason  to  his  own 
sex  in  not  trusting  to  its  intelligence.  For  nothing 
happened.  The  Woman  Liberal  simply  torpedoed  the 
Primrose  Dame  in  one  constituency,  and  the  Primrose 
Dame  vanquished  the  Woman  Liberal  by  sheer  force 
of  frocks  in  another  constituency,  and  the  balance  of 
things  was  undisturbed.  Parties  gained  nothing,  but 
man  has  now  to  defend  a  position  in  which  he  made 
the  first  breach  by  inviting  the  arts  of  woman  to 
supplement  his  own  political  influence  and  to  charm,  il 


228 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


not  to  overcome,  the  intelligence  of  the  enfranchised 
democracy. 

The  Maternal  Suffragist. 

But  the  type  of  women  produced  by  these  political 
agencies  is  generally  a  very  maternal  type.  When  they 
are  speaking  on  this  question  their  voices  thrill  with 
the  righteous  indignation  of  the  British  matron,  and 
there  is  nothing  vixenish  or  very  subversive  of  man 
in  their  creed.  They  talk  the  same  pointless  senti- 
mentalities as  Mr  Lloyd  George,  and  dwell  on  the 
home,  the  children,  the  hearth,  the  pantry,  in  fact  upon 
every  truly  blessed  thing  that  the  cause  teaches  them 
to  neglect.  Lady  Selborne,  for  instance — at  least  I 
think  it  was  she,  but  if  not  Lady  Constance  Lytton 
will  correct  me — said  in  a  recent  article  that  a 
woman's  domestic  life  was  enough  to  satisfy  the  am- 
bitions and  activities  of  any  woman,  and  I  quite  agree. 
But  why  on  earth  a  woman  who  takes  that  sane  and 
maternal  view  of  a  woman's  life  should  go  crusading 
for  a  vote  simply  passes  my  comprehension.  I  cannot 
understand  it  even  if  there  were  no  case  against  the 
vote  at  all,  and  if  a  woman  merely  considered  how 
infinitesimally  small  that  part  of  a  woman's  life  is  which 
is  touched  by  the  vote,  and  what  an  infinity  of  good 
ivork  there  is  for  a  woman  to  do  apart  altogether  from  it. 

Then  there  is  another  type  of  Suffragist  who  is  as 
contemptuous  of  man  as  any  of  "  the  cause,"  but  who 
unwisely  jumbles  up  her  contempt  of  man  with  a 
glorification  of  the  domestic  woman.  Such  a  one, 
apparently,  is  Mrs  Oilman,  the  leader  of  the  American 
Suffragists,  and  if  I  quote  that  lady  it  is  because  the 
underlying  idea  of  modern  Suffragism — implicit  in 
that  creed,  but  explicitly  presented  in  Feminism — is 
the  same  in  all  countries.  And  Mrs  Gilman  has  got 
hold  of  a  new  theory  about  us  which,  if  it  be  acted 
upon,  will  one  day  lead  to  some  emasculated  worm 
turning  and  writing  "  The  Subjection  of  Men." 

So  far  as  I  can  understand  the  theory  from  Mrs 
Oilman's  interpretation  of  it,  man  began  as  a  sort  of 


SUFFRAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  229 


outsider  in  the  human  race,  and  the  female  was  really 
"  the  race-type,"  but  he  managed  to  acquire  his  early 
empire  over  her  solely  by  his  physical  force.  But 
according  to  Mrs  Oilman,  whatever  good  man  has 
managed  to  do,  has  been  through  his  simple  human 
quality,  and  whatever  harm  man  has  done  has  been 
due  to  his  masculine  nature  ;  and  woman  has  only 
gone  wrong,  apparently,  when  she  has  copied  man — 
though  why  she  should  now  wish  to  go  wronger  by 
copying  him  in  everything  is  not  clear.  But  man  is 
told  by  Mrs  Oilman  that  woman  could  manage  the 
world  infinitely  better  than  he  does,  that  she  is  the  born 
administrator,  and  that  man  is  a  secondary  and  inferior 
product,  and  in  her  desire  to  exalt  woman  over  man, 
Mrs  Oilman  takes  a  false  step  by  saying  : 

"  As  a  matter  of  sex,  the  female  is  more  important.  To  be 
feminine,  if  one  were  nothing  else,  is  a  far  more  extensive  and 
dignified  office  than  to  be  masculine  and  nothing  else." 

The  Logical  Suffragist. 

And  you  do  not  need  to  think  long  to  see  that  that 
statement  gives  the  case  away  for  Suffragism 
altogether.  For  it  means  that  to  be  a  mother  and  do 
your  duty  properly  takes  up  infinitely  more  time  than 
to  be  a  father,  which  is  not  only  true,  but  the  final 
truth  about  this  matter.  And  these  lapses,  these 
admissions  that  give  the  case  away,  are  constantly 
being  made  by  the  Suffragist  who  wants  to  have  the 
best  of  both  worlds — home  and  the  world  outside. 
The  only  Suffragist  who  occupies  a  really  impregnable 
position,  if  you  accept  her  point  of  view,  is  the 
Feminist  who  boldly  takes  her  stand  on  the  platform 
that  the  fact  that  a  woman  has  to  bear  children  does 
not  make  her  a  maternal  woman — especially  if  she 
does  not  want  any — and  that  each  sex  must  work  out 
its  own  destiny  in  its  own  way.  The  Feminist  view, 
in  fact,  is  that  man  and  woman  are  just  as  antagonistic 
and  self-dependent  as  any  other  two  beings  who  waat 
to  pursue  the  same  ends  by  the  same  path  in  rivalry. 

And  so  we  come  back  again  to  the  Economic  Ques- 


230 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


tion,  for  though  I  may  seem  to  have  wandered  from 
the  point  all  I  have  been  saying  is  relevant,  and  you 
cannot  cross  a  river  till  you  come  to  the  bridge. 

To  pursue  that  figure,  the  river  in  this  case  is  that 
which  divides  woman's  life  from  man,  and  the  bridge 
by  which  woman  will  cross  over  into  man's  territory 
is  the  economic  bridge — the  bridge  of  Labour — and 
the  bridge  of  Sighs  ! 

I  have  now  got  to  give  some  proof  of  what  1  have 
said  of  the  tendencies  of  Feminism.  And  the  only 
proof  necessary  at  this  stage  is  afforded  by  the  eco- 
nomic programme  that  the  woman's  movement  has 
engendered.  For  it  so  happens  that,  owing  to  the 
candour  of  several  prominent  Suffragists,  the  cat  has 
been  let  out  of  the  bag  for  even  those  to  see  who 
thought  there  was  no  cat  in  it — nothing  but  a  blank 
ballot  paper  waiting  to  be  used  at  the  first  opportunity. 
And  just  as  one  section  has  said  :  "  Oh,  do  leave  off 
talking  about  Home  and  Duty  !  "  so  another  section, 
overlapping  it,  has  said  :  "  Oh,  for  goodness'  sake  leave 
off  talking  so  much  about  the  Vote  until  you  have 
quite  got  into  your  minds  what  you  are  going  to  do 
with  it ! "  And  the  advantage  of  this  candour  to  me  is 
that  I  have  not  got  laboriously  to  prove  what  is 
admitted  as  to  the  ultimate  aims  of  the  movement,  for 
they  are  proved  in  advance — not  by  admissions,  how- 
ever, but  rather  by  bold  and  commendably  candid 
statements. 

The  aim  of  Feminism  is,  of  course,  to  make  the 
wife  independent  of  the  husband,  or  woman  of  man. 
"  And  a  very  proper  and  desirable  thing,  too ! "  will 
the  matronly  Suff"ragist  begin  to  say.  Though  not  so 
confidently  when  she  sees  where  this  independence  of 
the  wife  is  going  to  land  her.  She  is  going  to  obtain 
her  independence,  of  course,  by  Labour.  Moreover, 
her  labour  is  not  to  be  in  the  home,  but  in  the  factory, 
the  mill,  the  office,  anywhere  and  everywhere  that  is 
open  to  man.  And  on  the  principle  that  a  husband  and 
a  wife  are  a  cat  and  a  dog,  and  that  home  is  a  dull  hole, 
stifling  woman's  noblest  capacities,  it  is  quite  right  that 


SUFFKAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  231 


she  should  go  and  earn  her  own  hVing.  Moreover,  as 
man's  equal  all  the  way  round,  she  ought  to  go  and 
earn  her  living,  and  not  be  dependent  upon  one  as 
weak  as  herself. 

Wages  for  Wives. 

Now  a  few  amiable  Suffragists  have  scented  the 
danger  of  this  line  of  economic  independence  of 
women.  They  see,  though  perhaps  vaguely,  that  it 
will  not  only  destroy  the  home  but  even  that  which 
we  now  agree  to  call  womanhood.  But  the  doctrine  of 
the  economic  dependence  of  woman  upon  man,  that 
is  to  say  upon  one  declared  to  be  only  an  equal,  could 
not  be  burked.  Mill  himself  said  that  for  a  wife  to 
be  above  her  husband's  subjection  she  must  have 
the  power  to  earn  her  own  living  independently  of 
the  husband  altogether.  But  the  amiable  and  matronly 
Suffragists  I  have  alluded  to  saw  that  the  logical  result 
of  that  "  must  "  would  be  to  throw  every  woman  upon 
the  labour  market,  and  so  they  tried  to  square  the 
theory  with  another  kind  of  practice.  What  they  did 
was  to  evolve  the  doctrine  of"  wages  for  wives." ' 

Now,  I  am  not  going  to  waste  much  time  on  that 
perfectly  silly  idea.  People  who  make  proposals  oi 
that  kind  should  really  not  be  allowed  the  advantages 
of  the  printing  press  to  spread  them.  Do  people  who 
talk  of  wages  for  wives  think  how  much  a  working 
husband  has,  as  his  reward  for  his  toil,  when  he  has 
discharged  his  family  obligations  ?  Do  they  know 
that  under  those  acres  and  acres  of  slate  roofs  of  the 

'  Lady  Abercon way  (Lady  M'Laren)  is  one  of  the  authors  of 
this  theory.  I  do  no  injustice  to  her  logic  in  taking  the  following 
passage  from  her  "Woman's  Charter  of  Rights  and  Liberties." 

"  It  is  misleading  to  talk  of  man  as  the  breadwinner.  He  is 
merely  the  man  who  earns  money.  Now,  gold  and  silver  are  of 
no  use  in  supporting'  human  life,  and  it  is  only  when  gold  and 
silver  are  converted  into  nourishing  food,  when  they  are  changed 
into  warmth  and  clothing  that  they  minister  to  life  at  all.  Thus 
the  task  of  converting  mere  useless  metal  into  material  to  sustain 
living  force  is  a  very  important  one,  and  one  which  has  been 
entirely  overlooked  in  estimating  the  value  of  women's  work." 


232 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


London  villa  suburb  live  husbands  and  wives  in  a 
precarious  comfort  only  because  the  husband  allows 
his  wife  to  spend  his  money,  and  because  he  is,  as  a 
good  husband  and  a  decent  father,  content  to  allow  his 
wife  to  dole  out  to  him  (and  he  takes  it  like  the  man  he 
is)  just  enough  every  week  for  his  fare  up  to  town, 
his  sixpenny  farinaceous  lunch,  his  week's  tobacco  and 
ft  very  occasional  drink  ?  A  working  man,  I  noticed, 
wrote  to  a  London  paper  some  months  ago,  when  this 
notion  was  being  promulgated,  to  point  out  that  if 
he  paid  his  wife  a  legal  minimum  wage,  either  he  could 
not  pay  his  rent  or  the  children  would  have  to  go  short 
of  boots,  for  all  that  he  had  "  left  over  by  his  missis  " 
for  himself  was  eighteenpence  a  week  for  tram  fares. 
And  to  that  sane  protest  from  a  sane  man,  some  insane 
female  replied,  "  Oh,  well,  the  wife  would  advance  you 
her  money  and  pay  for  the  children's  boots  herself, 
and  theji  they  wo%<ld  know  what  cavie  from  her  !  "  I 
think  I  can  hear  the  average  housewife  "  dratting  such 
nonsense  "  vigorously.  The  mother  who  cannot  teach 
her  children  what  they  owe  to  her  except  by  reminding 
them  that  she  has  paid  for  their  boots  ought  not  to 
be  a  mother  at  all. 

I  wonder  whether  the  Wages  for  Wives  people  have 
thought  the  matter  out  just  to  see  what  the  social  effect 
would  be.  Married  life  is  by  no  means  such  a  bed 
of  roses  for  the  average  man  that  he  will  be  likely  to  go 
into  it  binding  himself  up  to  the  eyes  to  a  woman  who 
takes  legal  wages  like  a  housekeeper.  If  he  is  to  pay 
a  wife  wages,  he  will  want  to  be  able  to  "  sack  "  her 
when  she  can't  earn  them,  just  as  his  employer  sacks 
him.  No  man  binds  himself  to  take  a  servant  for  life  ; 
he  will  bind  himself  to  take  a  wife,  who  would  throw 
her  legal  wages  in  his  face  if  she  were  a  worthy  woman 
at  all. 

If  he  pays  her  wages,  he  will  have  a  right  to  exact 
the  service  and  the  conditions  of  service  that  wages 
imply,  and  if  he  took  a  strict  view  of  his  relation  as  the 
employer,  I  don't  really  see  why  he  should  not  insist 
that  his  wife  took  her  meals  in  the  kitchen  along  with 


SUFFRAGIST  AND  FEMINIST  233 


the  other  servants.  And  if  the  law  is  going  to  order  a 
man  to  pay  his  wife  wages,  and  rent,  and  clothes 
and  food  for  his  children  (though  I  am  afraid  they 
would  soon  be  found  not  coming  into  the  scheme  of 
things  at  all)  he  will  want  a  servant  or  a  wife  whom  he 
can  dismiss  at  a  reasonable  month's  notice  when  he 
is  tired  of  the  services  she  renders — whatever  those 
services  be.  And  a  really  scrupulous-minded  employer 
might  insist  on  paying  his  wife  in  the  manner  that 
so  embarrassed  the  Baroness  in  de  Maupassant's  story 
"  Le  Signal."  In  short,  if  men  have  to  pay  wives 
wages,  they  will  buy  both  their  affections  and  their 
house  -  keeping  attentions  in  the  open  and  changing 
market.  In  other  words,  the  average  working  man,  at 
any  rate,  would  "  keep  a  woman."  But  it  is  indeed 
strange  that  people  who  talk  of  "  maternal  dignity  "  and 
the  "  sacred  status  of  motherhood  "  should  degrade  the 
whole  idea  of  wifehood  to  such  an  ignoble  level. 

Now,  the  Feminist  does  not  try  to  have  the  best  of 
both  worlds  by  trying  to  combine  domesticity  and 
economic  independence  in  that  fashion.  She  boldly 
and  more  pleasantly  says  :  If  woman  is  to  be  inde- 
pendent, she  shall  take  her  independence  to  the  home 
(unless  she  wants  to  keep  it  to  herself  entirely,  which 
would  be  the  more  likely)  and  not  acquire  it  there. 
And  there  might  be  something  to  be  said  for  the  social 
state  of  affairs  which  would  be  involved  in  such  an 
arrangement  if  only  it  were  certain  that  there  would 
any  longer  be  a  home  for  her  to  take  independence  to. 
But  as  that  is  the  very  question  we  shall  have  to  con- 
sider, we  will  approach  it  by  first  surveying,  very 
cursorily  and  without  the  introduction  of  any  statistics, 
woman's  actual  position  economically,  and  how  Suffrag- 
ism  and  then  Feminism  wishes  to  affect  it. 


Q 


/ 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


"Liberty"  And  A  New  Slavery. 

THE  BIRD  OF  PASSAGE — MARRIED  WOMEN'S  LABOUR 

—  woman's  HANDICAP  —  THE  SURPLUS  WOMAN  — 
WOMEN  AND  THE  PROFESSIONS  —  INTERMITTENT 
INDUSTRY  —  THE  MATRON  AT  WORK  —  THE  COUR- 
AGEOUS FEMINIST  —  WHERE  SUFFRAGIST  AND  FEM- 
INIST MEET  —  TIME  THE  ENEMY  —  THE  CHILDREN  ? 

—  THE  NEW  SLAVERY. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


"  Liberty  "  And  A  New  Slavery. 

As  things  now  are,  a  woman  enters  the  industrial 
market  not  because  she  wishes  to  devote  her  life  to 
industry,  but  because  she  can  turn  to  some  advantage 
those  years  that  lie  between  the  beginning  of  her 
womanhood  and  the  uncertain  day  when  she  hopes 
to  get  married.  That  is  the  prime  distinguishing  fact 
between  woman's  industrial  position  and  man's.  As 
Mrs  Billington  Greig  says,  sex  gives  no  advantage  to 
man  in  his  labour ;  nor  does  it  affect  his  motives  in 
entering  or  leaving  the  industrial  market.  He  does 
not — or  he  does  not  as  things  are  —  look  forward  to 
the  time  when  a  woman  will  take  him  out  of  the 
factory  or  the  office  and  work  for  him.  He  works 
primarily  to  satisfy  his  own  needs,  and  when  he  feels 
that  he  can  afford  to  keep  a  wife,  he  generally  takes 
one.  Not  because  he  is  an  altruistic  being,  by  any 
means,  but  because  he  is  impelled  by  a  force  fortun- 
ately beyond  votes  and  Acts  of  Parliament,  and  that 
is  sex  attraction.  And  as  the  desire  born  of  that  force 
can  be  gratified,  as  things  now  are,  most  satisfactorily 
by  awakening  the  same  desire  in  one  who  prefers  home 
and  the  security  of  a  husband  to  industrialism  and  a 
precarious  economic  independence,  he  finds  little  diffi- 
culty in  getting  a  wife. 

The  Bird  of  Passage. 

And  that  brings  us  to  another  difference  between 

man  and  woman  as  a  wage-earning  being.  A  man 
ordinarily  earns  wages — at  least,  every  married  man 
does — to  keep  not  only  himself  but  his  wife,  and  what 
children  he  may  have,  out  of  his  earnings.  A  woman 
sometimes  earns  money  to  keep  her  husband  (though, 

237 


238  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


very  properly,  the  law  shows  how  it  regards  that  in- 
version of  the  natural  order  of  things  by  protecting 
her  earnings  against  her  husband);  and  sometimes  a 
widow  earns  money  to  keep  her  children,  just  as  some- 
times children  earn  money  to  keep  their  widowed 
mother.  But  there  is  a  very  large  number  of  women 
and  girls  who  do  not  earn  their  living,  though  they  are 
occupied  permanently  and  throughout  the  working  day, 
but  who  earn  enough  to  keep  themselves  in  pocket- 
money  or  to  pay  some  portion  of  the  parental  cost 
of  keeping  them  ;  and  the  pocket-money  girl  has  done 
more  harm  to  the  economic  independence  of  men  than 
she  has  done  to  hasten  the  day  of  the  economic  inde- 
pendence of  women.  But  all  young  women  who  go 
out  into  the  industrial  or  the  commercial  market  go 
into  it,  not  to  devote  their  lives  to  it,  but  hoping  to 
remain  in  it  only  until  the  man  they  are  prepared  to 
marry  comes  forward  to  relieve  them  of  the  burden  of 
earning  their  own  living,  and  turn  them  into  what 
Feminism  calls  "  a  parasite " — that  is  a  woman  who 
goes  marketing  with  her  husband's  wages.  And  some- 
times the  man  never  comes  forward,  or  he  is  not 
accepted  because  he  cannot  offer  everything  the  young 
woman  would  like  to  have,  and  then  she  grows  up  to 
join  that  margin  of  unabsorbed  women  without  whom 
all  this  woman's  question — political,  social,  and  eco- 
nomic— would  never  have  advanced  beyond  the  harm- 
less and  speculative  stage  in  which  Mill  and  the 
blue-stockings  left  it.  But  most  women  lie  apart  from 
this  problem,  and  get  out  of  industry  by  marriage. 
The  man,  however,  remains  a  worker  in  the  industrial 
and  professional  field  all  his  life,  or  until  illness  lays 
him  aside,  or  until  he  has  acquired  a  competency  that 
enables  him  to  give  up  work  altogether.  The  con- 
trast between  his  position  and  woman's  position  in 
the  economic  field  is  therefore  very  marked 

Married  Women's  Labour. 

Let  us  take  quinquennial  periods  in  the  ages  of  men 
and  women  employed  industrially.    Between  the  ages 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  239 


of  20  and  25  one  in  three  won-ien  (of  that  age)  are 
employed  in  some  capacity  or  other,  whilst  practically 
all  men  are  employed.  But  after  25  the  marriage 
market  is  already  beginning  to  take  women  out  of 
the  industrial  market ;  and  so  in  the  next  five-yearly 
period  between  25  and  30  years  of  age,  only  one  in 
five  women  is  industrially  employed,  whilst  among 
men  of  the  same  age  the  proportion  is  as  high  as 
98'3  per  cent — that  is  to  say,  all  men  except  rich  men 
and  invalids.  Between  the  ages  of  40  and  45,  oie 
woman  in  six  is  at  work,  whilst  the  percentage  among 
men  is  97"8 — that  is  to  say,  whereas  only  167  women 
in  a  thousand  are  in  employment,  978  men  in  a 
thousand  are  in  employment,  between  the  ages  of 
40  and  45.  And  whilst  the  proportion  of  men  em- 
ployed continues  very  high  to  the  end  of  the  mortal 
chapter,  when  man  can  work  no  more,  the  proportion 
of  women  employed  falls  away. 

Now  the  falling  away  in  the  middle  period  of 
woman's  life  would  be  much  more  marked  but  for  the 
operation  of  one  cause  that  breaks  the  fall,  and  that 
is,  female  married  labour.  As  it  is,  woman  is  mainly  a 
bird  of  passage  in  the  labour  market,  entering  it  before 
she  marries  and  leaving  it  in  most  cases  when  she  gets 
married  ;  but  a  large  number  of  married  women  still  go 
on  working  when  they  ought  to  be  looking  after  their 
homes  ;  and  it  is  this  condition  of  affairs  that  approxi- 
mates to  the  Feminist  ideal  of  woman's  economic 
independence.  Or,  rather,  the  spectacle  and  conditions 
of  married  labour  afford  us  the  nearest  approach  in 
actual  being  to  that  state  of  affairs  which  will  prevail, 
if  the  Feminist  ideal  be  completely  realised.  The 
subject  of  female  married  labour  is  too  vast  to  be 
entered  upon  here  at  all.  Much  has  already  been 
written  upon  it,  and  if  Miss  Frances  Low,  who  has 
investigated  the  conditions  of  married  labour  from  the 
standpoint  of  one  who  is  not  impressed  by  its  bene- 
ficent effects,  gave  her  investigations  permanent  form 
she  would  do  good  service  in  swelling  the  literature 
available  on  the  subject. 


240 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Woman's  Handicap. 

Now,  it  is  not  necessary  to  say,  and  it  would  be 
unfair  to  say,  that  the  Feminist  Suffragists  would  be 
content  to  see  the  conditions  of  female  labour,  married 
or  single,  not  ameliorated.  They  would  aim  at  its 
amelioration,  first  by  throwing  open  to  women  every 
industry,  occupation,  business,  or  profession,  and  then 
by  trying  to  raise  the  rate  of  wages  paid  to  them. 
But  two  obstacles  would  stand  in  their  way. 

The  first,  that  three  out  of  four  male  industrial 
workers  are  employed  in  those  industries  from  which 
women  would  still  be  excluded  until  they  had 
developed  something  like  physical  equality  with  men — 
that  is,  in  the  engineering,  shipping,  railway  and  general 
transport  trades,  the  coal  mining,  building,  iron- 
working,  and  the  heavier  trades  generally.  So  that  it 
would  take  some  time  at  least  before  women  had 
penetrated  into  even  the  greater  part  of  man's  in- 
dustrial sphere.  And  as  capitalists  they  would  be  at 
a  disadvantage  with  men  for  many,  many  years  to 
come — for  quite  long  enough,  in  fact,  for  women  to 
have  confirmed  themselves  as  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water  in  comparison  with  the  capitalistic 
advantages  possessed  by  men. 

And  the  second  obstacle  is  that  woman  is  not  as 
efficient  a  worker  as  man,  even  in  those  trades  in  which 
men  have  helped  to  protect  women  (and  themselves) 
by  insisting  that  on  piecework  women  should  be  paid 
at  the  same  rate  as  men.  For  even  in  the  textile 
trades,  where  machinery  does  its  marvellous  work 
under  human  guidance,  a  man  earns  twenty-five  per 
cent  a  week  more  than  woman.  But  in  other  trades, 
where  either  more  skill  would  be  required  of  them  than 
they  are  likely  to  exhibit  for  some  time  to  come,  or 
where  more  physical  aptitude  would  be  demanded  than 
they  would  be  likely  to  acquire  for  some  time  to  come 
— in  those  trades  equalisation  of  wages,  if  it  could  be 
brought  about  at  all,  would  be  likely  to  bring  men's  wages 
down  rather  than  to  send  women's  wages  up,  by  a 
strong  influx  of  women  in  the  labour  market  making 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  241 


labour  cheaper.  So  that  even  though  efforts  were 
made  to  ameliorate  the  position  of  the  woman  worker, 
it  does  not  follow  that  they  would  be  successful  by  any 
means,  and  the  probability  is  that  for  a  sufficient  space 
of  time  to  allow  for  the  physical  efficiency  of  woman  to 
be  gained  at  the  expense  of  disqualifying  her  for  the 
one  thing  for  which  she  is  essential  and  supremely 
fitted,  the  conditions  of  female  labour  would  remain 
substantially  the  same  as  now — subject  to  the  pro- 
bability that  they  would  be  much  worse  by  reason  of 
the  greater  competition  brought  about  by  all  women 
trying  to  secure  "  economic  independence." 

Miss  Violet  Markham,  a  prominent  worker  among 
the  band  of  women  who  are  opposing  the  Suffragists 
publicly,  is  one  of  the  most  courteous  and  effective 
controversialists  to  be  found  even  on  one  side  of  the 
controversy ;  and  the  following  passage  taken  from  an 
article  by  her  on  "  Votes  and  Wages  "  gives  some  idea 
of  the  social  condition  of  affairs  that  lurks  within  the 
scheme  of  woman's  economic  independence  : 

*' '  If  a  Glasgow  lad  wearies  of  work  he  marries  a  Dundee 
lassie,'  runs  the  saying  in  Scotland.  Dundee,  the  centre  of  the 
jute  trade,  must  surely  be  an  industrial  paradise  from  the 
Suffragists'  point  of  view.  Women  form  three-fifths  of  the  persons 
employed  ;  they,  rather  than  the  men,  carry  on  the  skilled 
processes  of  the  trade,  and  the  employment  of  married  women 
takes  place  on  a  large  scale.  Here  are  women  who  cannot  be 
taunted  with  the  adjective  '  parasites  ' ;  and  yet  what  do  we  find 
as  the  result  of  their  labours  ?  The  highest  infant  mortality  rate 
in  Scotland  :  physical  deterioration  of  so  grave  a  character  that 
the  Chief  Inspector  of  Factories  in  his  report  for  1900  spoke  of  a 
height  of  five  feet  and  a  weight  of  nine  stone  as  being  of  common 
occurrence  in  men  of  twenty  years  and  upwards  ;  and  general, 
social,  and  domestic  conditions  which  are  the  despair  of  all 
who  know  them." 

And  everyone  who  knows  anything  of  the  evils 
produced  by  women  working  industrially — as  in  the 
Staffordshire  potteries — knows  that  home  and  children 
and  all  those  attributes  of  woman  which  we  now  call 
"  womanly  virtues  "  go  to  the  wall  as  soon  as  woman 
becomes  an  industrial  worker  and  prolongs  her  in- 
dustrialism into  her  married  life. 


242  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Miss  Markham,  by  the  way,  quotes  a  passage  from 
Mrs  Fawcett  in  the  Economic  Journal  (1892)  which 
is  worth  recalling,  and  I  quote  it  on  Miss  Markham's 
authority  without  having  referred  to  the  original.  Mrs 
Fawcett  is  cited  as  having  written  that  one  drawback 
to  woman's  hope  of  economic  equality  with  man  is  that 
those  industries  in  which  she  is  engaged  are  not  so 
wealth -producing  as  those  in  which  man  is  now 
engaged.  That  is  true  ;  and  if  man  insisted  for  the 
sake  of  retaining  his  own  economic  independence  upon 
retaining  those  industries  within  his  own  control,  he 
would  hold  woman  at  a  permanent  economic  dis- 
advantage, just  as  he  would  hold  her  for  a  long  time  to 
come  by  his  capitalistic  monopoly.  And  Mrs  Fawcett 
is  further  cited  :  "  The  cry,  '  the  same  wages  for  the 
same  work,'  is  very  plausible,  but  it  is  proved  to  be 
impossible  of  achievement  when  the  economic  con- 
ditions of  the  two  sexes  are  so  widely  different."  And 
as  Mrs  Fawcett  is  a  political  economist  as  well  as  a 
Suffragist  that  opinion  is  worth  considering,  for  it 
means  that  if  woman  seeks  her  own  independence, 
apart  from  man,  she  will,  in  the  economic  rivalry,  be 
outdistanced,  and  therefore  held  in  "  subjection," 
though  she  had  forfeited  man's  protection. 

The  Surplus  Woman. 

Now,  there  is  a  midway  position  between  the 
Suffragist  who  wants  "  just  to  put  her  cross  on  a 
little  bit  of  paper"  and  the  Feminist  who  wants 
complete  economic  independence  for  her  sex.  That 
position  is  held  by  orthodox  Suffragists  who  in  the 
main  adhere  to  Mill's  position.  His  position  was  that 
the  normal  woman  will  choose  a  domestic  career,  and 
she  will  have  her  time  taken  up  for  part  of  her  life  with 
domestic  concerns,  but  should  be  free  to  devote  herself 
also  to  any  profession  or  trade  which  she  can  pursue 
without  hurt  to  her  domestic  duties.  Further,  the 
power  to  be  independent  of  her  husband  should  be  hers 
all  the  time  so  that  she  may  go  out  and  earn  her  own 
living  when  she  wants  to  do  so.      And  further, 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  243 


apart  from  married  women,  those  women  who  do  not 
choose  marriage  for  their  vocation  should  be  allowed  to 
order  their  lives  just  as  though  they  were  men.  And 
that  brings  us  to  the  question  of  the  surplus  woman,  as 
she  is  called — the  woman  who  either  has  not  secured 
the  protection  of  a  husband  or  who  disdains  to  try 
to  secure  either  the  husband  or  his  protection. 

It  is  pointed  out  that  inasmuch  as  there  are  more 
women  than  men  in  the  land,  there  is  that  problem 
staring  us  in  the  face.  "  What  are  you  going  to  do 
with  her  ? "  it  is  asked.  "  You  can't  put  her  into  a 
lethal  chamber,  you  can't  even  argue  her  out  of  exist- 
ence. What  are  you  going  to  do  with  her?  "  Well,  it 
is  a  fair  question.  But  as  far  as  the  political  side  of  the 
matter  goes,  there  is  no  more  reason  why  we  should 
shift  the  whole  basis  of  government  because  a  certain 
number  of  women  are  doomed  or  destined  more  or 
less  permanently  to  be  non-domestic  workers,  than 
there  is  to  abolish  marriage,  or  to  modify  its 
monogamous  basis  (although  Feminism  even  con- 
templates that  solution)  because  the  same  women  do 
not  want  to  enter,  or  cannot  enter,  into  the  marriage 
state.  And  as  to  the  economic  problem,  of  the 
"surplus  woman" — though  that  is  not  the  most 
pleasing  phrase  by  which  to  describe  her,  because 
some  of  the  most  estimable  women  alive  are  those 
whom  man  has  missed  for  a  mate — that  problem, 
which  cannot  be  shirked  any  more  than  the  problem  of 
the  surplus  man,  is  capable  of  solution  without  such 
a  violent  upheaval  as  would  be  involved  by  reducing 
every  other  woman  to  the  same  economic  and  "  un- 
protected "  position. 

But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  women  concerned  are 
(apart  from  the  exceptional  cases  to  be  mentioned) 
settling  the  matter  for  themselves.  There  is  no  means 
of  providing  work  for  those  women  who  have  not 
got  husbands  to  work  for  them,  except  by  them  taking 
their  chance  in  the  economic  market,  and  that  is  what 
they  are  doing.  No  trade  or  industry  is  barred  to 
them  whatever  except  those  barred  by  their  physical 


244 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


incapacity  to  perform  the  work  according  to  the  male 
standard.  No  woman  would  be  accepted  by  the  arm\' 
or  naval  recruiting  depots,  of  course,  but  if  she  were 
to  present  herself  for  a  job  in  an  engineering  works 
or  on  the  railway,  her  services  would  be  declined  not 
because  of  her  sex  per  se,  but  because  the  man  to  whom 
she  presented  herself  for  employment  would  not  think 
he  would  get  out  of  her  the  individual  efficiency  he 
required.  But  apart  from  such  occupations  as  those 
for  which  she  will  have  to  go  into  training  when  the 
time  comes,  there  is  none  into  which  a  woman  may  not 
penetrate. 

Woman  and  the 
Professions. 

And  as  to  the  professions,  she  may  become  a  doctor, 
an  architect,  an  accountant,  a  journalist,  or  what  she 
pleases.  But  two  main  professions  are  closed  to  her — 
the  law  and  the  church.  As  to  the  church,  I  have 
nothing  to  say.  A  Suffragist  Bishop  thinks  that 
woman  is  "naturally"  debarred  from  entering  Holy 
Orders  and  qualifying  for  the  Episcopal  Bench,  though 
why  a  woman  should  not  be  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  if  she  should  be  Lord  Chancellor  I  do 
not  see.  The  proscription  in  that  case  seems  to  be  a 
good  instance  of  a  man  being  a  Free  Trader  in  every- 
thing but  his  own  trade.  But  as  to  the  profession 
of  the  law,  that  is  another  matter,  and  I  suppose 
the  governing  motive  in  the  exclusion  of  women  from 
the  legal  profession  is,  at  bottom,  a  trade  union  motive. 
Probably  the  General  Council  of  the  Bar,  or  the 
Benchers  of  the  Inns  of  Court  (like  the  Incorporated 
Law  Society),  in  their  last  resort  base  their  opposition 
to  the  admission  of  women  upon  the  general  law  of 
self-preservation — a  law  against  which  women  will 
frequently  come  into  conflict  when  they  are  striving  for 
economic  independence.  They  know  that  the  pro- 
fession of  the  Bar  is  already  lamentably  over-stocked 
by  men  :  they  know  that  hundreds  of  barristers  have  to 
eke  out  a  living  in  other  walks  of  life  ;  that  there 


A  XEW  SLAVERY 


245 


..re  men  who  have  been  at  the  Bar  for  twenty  years 
and  have  been  maintaining  wives  and  families  in 
genteel  poverty,  hoping  for  the  day  that  never  comes ; 
or  who  have  never  married,  and  so  never  absorbed  one 
of  the  surplus  women,  simply  because  they  could 
not  earn  enough  to  keep  themselves.  And  probably 
they  fear  opening  those  gates  to  an  influx  of  com- 
petition which  would  potentially  double  the  pressure 
of  the  competition  within  an  over-stocked  profession. 
For  even  man  is  not  always  economically  independent 
— he  is  often  dependent  on  that  chance  and  luck  that 
never  come. 

But  as  to  the  problem  of  the  surplus  woman  it  may 
disappear  or  be  solved  by  itself  In  any  case  it  will 
have  to  be  tackled,  like  any  other  economic  problem, 
but  this  is  not  the  place  to  tackle  it,  from  my  point  of 
view,  which  is  that  of  regarding  it  as  a  wholly  sub- 
ordinate problem.  I  am  far  from  saying  here  that  if 
a  woman  wishes  to  become  a  lawyer  she  should  not  be 
allowed  to  become  a  lawyer,  and  take  her  chance  of 
becoming  a  briefless  barrister  like  a  man  ;  but  I  do 
say  that  unless  she  is  to  be  regarded  as  an  exceptional 
woman  we  are  going  off  the  track  of  progress  alto- 
gether, and  that  a  state  of  society  which  is  based  on 
the  assumption  that  it  is  as  normal  for  a  woman  as  for 
a  man  to  become  a  lawyer  or  a  merchant  or  a  mechanic 
is  a  state  of  society  heading  straight  for  racial  decay  ; 
and  that  the  Suffrage  is  just  that  implement  which 
will  both  sanction  and  compel  this  abnormal  standard, 
not  alone  in  those  women  who  want  to  be  lawyers  and 
merchants  and  mechanics,  but  in  those  who  do  not. 
And  so  the  Anti-suffragist  does  not  want  to  see  the 
house  burned  down  to  secure  roast  pig,  nor  every 
woman,  married  or  single,  reduced  to  self-dependence 
because  a  certain  number  of  women  prefer  to  remain 
unmarried  or  to  be  independent.  In  any  case,  the 
problem  of  the  surplus  woman  and  the  self-sufficing 
woman  is  a  comparatively  modern  phenomenon,  and 
may  be  righted  without  any  violent  social  upheaval. 
But  even  if  we  assume — which  we  are  not  going  to  do — 


246  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


that  the  maternal  function  is  less  important  to  the  race 
than  the  ultimate  proof  that  woman  could  in  time  rival 
man  in  every  sphere  of  his  activities,  the  fact  remains 
that  the  maternal  woman  needs  consideration  at  least 
as  much  as  the  non-maternal  woman.  Besides,  some 
of  the  responsibility  for  the  surplus  women  falls  on 
themselves.  The  higher  education  is  the  sort  of 
education,  apparently,  that  swells  the  number  of 
surplus  women  ;  and  if  women  prefer  to  wear  them- 
selves out  in  academic  competitive  examinations  until 
the  maternal  side  of  them  becomes  atrophied,  and  then 
find  themselves  educated  above  and  beyond  marriage 
altogether,  some  provision  will  no  doubt  have  to  be 
made  for  a  new  economic  and  human  complication. 
But  no  general  revolution  is  required  to  meet  a 
partial  case,  and  it  may  even  be  cured  by  a  natural 
agency. 

For  there  is  an  interesting  theory  that  the  predomin- 
ance of  one  sex  in  the  birth  rate  runs  in  cycles,  and 
that  male  children  may  in  another  generation  pre- 
dominate largely  over  the  female,  though  a  greater 
wastage  goes  on  among  men,  apart  from  the  greater 
difficulty  in  rearing  male  children.  But  we  need  not 
wait  for  that  cycle  to  come.  It  is  here  now.  For  to 
every  lOO  girl  babies  there  are  io6  boys  born,  but  as 
fewer  survive  the  figures  become  exactly  reversed  so  as 
to  give  just  that  excess  of  adult  women  over  men  which 
constitutes  the  problem  of  the  surplus  woman.  Well, 
if  the  science  and  womanhood  of  England  would 
devote  itself  to  the  task  of  keeping  the  boy  babies 
alive,  the  problem  of  the  surplus  woman  would  soon 
be  so  reduced  that  it  would  practically  disappear,  or 
would  be  represented  almost  entirely  by  those  women 
who  prefer  to  seek  their  economic  and  general  inde- 
pendence in  their  own  way.  But  I  think  that  we  shall 
see  that  the  whole  drift  of  the  movement  towards  the 
economic  independence  of  women  is  to  increase  enor- 
mously the  surplus  woman — or  at  least,  the  number 
of  women  who  would  lack  husbands. 

And  now  we  can  return  to  the  mid-way  position 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  247 


held  by  Suffragists  concerning  woman's  economic 
independence,  and  pursue  the  subject  to  a  finish. 

Intermittent  Industry. 

There  are  those  who  do  not  aim  at  all  that  the 
Feminist  aims  at,  but  who  would  be  content  if  women 
could  have  the  "  power  "  of  being  independent,  and  take 
up  their  work  at  will,  fitfully  to  please  themselves,  or 
entirely  if  they  preferred  it  and  they  did  not  find 
marriage  a  success.  Well,  that  is  really  an  impracti- 
cable plan,  unless  a  woman  is  prepared  to  let  her 
trade  or  business  or  profession  take  the  first  place  in 
her  life,  and  her  home  the  second  place.  And  it  is 
worth  while  recalling  that  even  the  efforts  of  man  so  to 
legislate  as  to  prevent  women  from  injuring  the  race, 
by  keeping  too  long  at  her  work  before  the  birth  of  a 
child  and  returning  to  her  work  too  soon  afterwards, 
have  been  opposed  by  Suffragists  on  the  ground  of  an 
unwarrantable  interference  with  a  woman's  liberty  to 
earn  her  own  living. 

But  the  notion  that  a  woman  can  take  to  a  profession 
or  trade  intermittently — drop  it  for  a  year  or  two  after 
she  is  married,  and  pick  it  up  again  when  she  has  a 
mind  to — is  not  a  practical  thing.  Trades  and  pro- 
fessions do  not  stand  still  waiting  for  the  return  at 
some  vague  time  or  other  of  the  person  who  has  left 
the  one  or  broken  the  connections  of  the  other.  Besides 
it  would  really  be  a  dreadful  world  in  which  wives  and 
mothers  were  always  holding  the  threat  of  desertion 
from  one  camp  to  the  other  over  the  head  of  the  home, 
or  over  the  head  of  one  who  was  no  longer  the  head  of 
the  home.  Indeed,  one  may  imagine  much  domestic 
anxiety  caused  by  such  a  possible  state  of  affairs,  the 
husband  being  awakened  in  the  dead  of  the  night  by  his 
wife  suddenly  exclaiming  :  "  John,  I  want  to  be  a  plum- 
ber !  "  and  being  perplexed  to  know  whether  his  spouse 
was  merely  expressing  one  of  those  desires  and  longings 
that  come  whimsically  to  women  under  certain  happy 
conditions,  or  whether  the  wish  for  economic  independ- 
ence were  tardily  and  suddenly  asserting  itself  in  her. 


248 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


The  Matron  at  Work. 

Mill  thought  "  there  ought  to  be  nothing  to  prevent 
faculties  exceptionally  adapted  to  any  other  pursuit 
from  obeying  their  vocation  notwithstanding  marriage, 
due  provision  being  made  for  supplying  otherwise  any 
falling  short,  which  might  become  inevitable,  in  her  full 
performance  of  the  ordinary  functions  of  a  mistress  of  a 
family."  But  perhaps  the  best  answer  to  that  is  that 
the  cases  would  be  so  exceptional  that  one  need  not 
worry  about  them.  Matrons  are  not  usually  seized 
with  a  desire  to  take  up  another  walk  in  life,  and  the 
woman  who  has  taken  it  up  before  her  marriage  does 
in  practice  wish  to  leave  it,  and  is  glad  to  leave  it, 
when  she  marries  because  she  feels  that  she  is  taking 
up  a  duty  which  demands  her  whole  attention  and 
care.  Even  when  a  musical  comedy  actress  gets 
married  the  papers  unnecessarily  tell  those  who  are 
not  interested  in  the  personal  matter  that  "  my 
husband  and  I  have  not  yet  decided  whether  I  shall 
return  to  the  stage."  But  at  any  rate  such  cases  must 
be  exceptional,  as  things  now  are,  when  the  normal 
sphere  of  woman  is  the  domestic  sphere. 

But  it  is  made  not  to  be  an  exceptional  case  by 
the  strange  theory  which  supposes  that  married  women 
have  nothing  much  to  do.  According  to  this  theory, 
a  woman  is  kept  in  a  state  of  partial  idleness  in  her 
earlier  years  as  a  married  woman,  but  when  her 
children  are  growing  up  she  longs  for  some  avenue  of 
activity  outside  the  home.  V\  ell,  J  have  never  yet  met 
the  woman  with  such  superabundant  vitality  that  after 
she  has  brought  up  a  family  and  approached  her 
critical  age  she  wanted  to  begin  to  start  to  earn  her 
living.  Everybody  ought  to  know  that  when  a  woman 
has  brought  up  a  family  she  wants  a  little  rest  and 
peace.  She  almost  looks  forward  to  the  time  (although 
she  will  be  older  by  so  many  years)  when  she  will  have 
"  got  the  children  off  her  hands,"  as  she  puts  it,  in 
order  that  she  may  get  the  rest  and  peace  ;  and  though 
she  may  devote  herself  to  a  wider  social  life  when 
she  is  freed  from  her  most  pressing  pre-occupations, 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  249 


her  desire  for  a  fresh  avenue  of  activity  does  not  take 
the  form  of  desiring  to  resume  any  work  that  her 
marriage  ended,  still  less  to  take  up  poker-work  on 
a  commercial  scale. 

And  all  these  attempts  to  mix  up  the  domestic 
woman  with  the  independent  woman  really  fail.  They 
involve  such  an  element  of  fitfulness  and  spasm  as 
to  be  worthless  for  any  settled  policy.  Broadly  we 
may  say  that  the  woman  who  is  married  and  finds 
it  her  vocation  also  finds  that  it  gives  her  quite  enough 
to  do  ;  and  the  task  before  society  is  to  see  rather  that 
the  economic  conditions  which  at  present  do  not 
give  her  husband  the  security  that  is  necessary  for 
maintaining  the  home  shall  be  changed  so  as  to  secure 
it — though  the  very  movement  which  aims  at  woman's 
economic  independence  makes  that  security,  of  course, 
increasingly  difficult  of  attainment. 

But  the  really  logical  position  occupied  by  the 
Suffragists  is  that  taken  by  the  Feminist  section,  who 
say  that  woman  must  be  trained  to  support  herself,  to 
be  self-sufficing  and  to  remain  so  if  need  be.  Mrs 
Billington  Greig  pithily  puts  that  position  in  these 
words :  "  The  new  demands  and  the  old  condition 
cannot  subsist  together.  But  the  abolition  of  the  old 
condition  must  place  upon  the  very  women  who  make 
the  new  demands  a  heavy  burden  —  the  burden  of 
personal  economic  independence."  And  at  this  point 
we  must  link  up  the  question  of  woman's  economic 
independence  with  the  claim  for  her  political  freedom 
and  show  that  one  involves  the  other,  and  where  the 
two  together  will  take  us. 

The  Courageous  Feminist. 

A  challenge  having  been  issued  to  Suffragists,  "  Are 
you  willing  to  give  up,  for  the  political  advantage  of 
a  vote,  the  social,  legal  and  economic  advantage  of  your 
status  as  wives?"  an  official  in  one  of  the  Suffragist 
societies,  deputed  to  answer  that  sort  of  question  in  the 
public  press,  replies,  "  Certainly,  certainly — we  are  not 
only  willing  but  ea^er  to  give  up  man's  protection  and 

B 


250  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


to  seek  our  own  independence."    Well,  so  long  as  we 
know  who  "  we  "  are  and  are  not,  that  is  all  right.  The 
"  eager "  lady  speaks  not  for  herself  only,  but  for  her 
allied  Suffragists,  but  whether  they  speak  for  woman 
in  the  mass  is  a  very  different  question.    All  the  same 
it  is  just  as  well  that  women  in  the  mass  should  begin 
to  realise  that  "we"  is  intended  to  stand  for  them  too ; 
so  that  those  "  parasitical "  women  who  are  now  quite 
content  to  wait  for  their  husbands'  weekly  wages  or 
their  husbands'  monthly  salaries  must  begin  to  under- 
stand that  in  assenting  to  their  political  enfranchise- 
ment they  are  assenting  also  to  the  doctrine  that  they 
shall  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  their  husbands' 
wages  or  salaries.     As  Mrs  Billington  Greig  says: 
"  The  married  woman  accepts  the  position  legally  es- 
tablished. ...  In  law  she  has  the  best  of  the  bargain  ; 
there  is  no  law  obliging  her  to  work  ;  there  is  a  very 
clear  law  entitling  her  to  maintenance."    But  that 
privileged  position  she  must,  on  political  enfranchise- 
ment, exchange  for  one  of  self-dependence,  which  is 
what  "  independence  "  really  means.   That  is  the  logical 
outcome  of  woman's  political  enfranchisement,  and  it 
is  an  advantage  to  have  to  deal  with  logical  and  clear- 
sighted Feminists  who  accept  the  logical  conclusion. 
The    Suffragist  who  almost  baffles   attack   is  the 
Suffragist  who  extols  maternity  and  the  home  when 
it  suits  her,  but  puts  all  that  sort  of  thing  in  the 
background  when  it  doesn't ;  and  who  wants  to  retain 
all  the  advantages  of  the  legal  status  of  a  wife,  but  to 
acquire  the  right  to  make  laws  in  general.    But  the 
Feminist  who  says,  "We  wish  to  take  no  advantage 
whatever  of  femininity,"  at  least  occupies  a  logical  and 
courageous  position.    And  she  saves  one  the  trouble 
of  trying  to  prove  the  obvious  and  what  must  be  in- 
evitable by  coming  out  boldly  to  meet  the  inevitable 
and  taking  the  position  of  woman's  self-dependence 
into  both  hands.    She  reduces  to  contemptible  signi- 
ficance the  intelligence  of  those  Suffragists  who  say 
(to  quote  an  actual  instance) :  "  It  is  rating  our  in- 
telligence very  low  to  tell  us  that  if  a  woman  once 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  251 


in  four  or  five  years  walks  down  to  a  polling  place  and 
puts  a  cross  before  a  man's  name,  she  will  seriously 
endanger  her  best  womanly  characteristics."  And  the 
Feminist  reduces  to  the  same  level  those  parliamentary 
advocates  who  think  that  that  pedestrian  exercise  is 
all  that  is  involved  in  the  woman's  "  movement." 

Where  Suffragist  and 
Feminist  Meet. 

But  the  logical  Feminist  and  the  logical  Suffragist 
reach  the  same  end  by  different  routes.  The  logical 
Suffragist  says,  "  Certainly,  we  are  eager  to  give  up 
our  privileges  in  exchange  for  fresh  responsibilities  and 
entire  self-dependence;  and  for  the  sake  of  the  vote 
we  will  gladly  surrender  all  our  advantages."  But  the 
Feminist  says,  "  The  vote  is  only  a  vehicle.  Where 
we  want  to  get  to,  whether  we  ride  or  walk,  is  the 
complete  independence  of  woman  from  man,  though 
that  means  complete  political  independence  just  as 
much  as  economical  self-dependence."  And  so  the 
two  streams  converge  at  this  point  of  woman's  self- 
sufficiency  and  self-dependence,  and  we  may  pause  to 
look  around  us,  having  got  that  far.  Nay,  we  need  go 
little  further  at  all. 

Now,  if  a  woman  is  to  have  no  legal  claim  upon  a 
man  for  maintenance,  whether  she  be  married  or  not, 
she  will,  of  course,  have  to  maintain  herself  Whether 
she  be  a  Feminist,  a  logical  Suffragist,  or  merely  a 
Suffragist  who  does  not  quite  know  what  she  wants, 
or  whether  she  be  what  I  think  is  the  ordinary  and 
average  woman — a  woman  who  desires  nothing  better 
than  home  and  husband  to  love  and  cherish  her  in 
return  for  her  own  love  and  care — whatever  sort  of 
woman  she  may  be,  her  first  care  will  have  to  be  to 
secure  an  entire  independence  of  man.  How  she  will 
secure  it,  or  whether  she  can  secure  it  at  all,  or  whether 
she  will  be  happy  when  she  has  got  it,  we  will  not 
for  the  moment  consider,  but  pause  to  look  into  one 
feature  of  woman's  position  that  Suffragists  of  all 
grades  ignore,  though  it  has  very  much  to  do  with 


252  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


the  general  question  of  woman's  whole  position.  And 
that  is  the  question  of  the  relative  age-marriageability 
of  the  two  sexes. 

Time  the  Enemy. 

We  are  to  suppose  a  world,  or  a  country,  in  which 
youths  and  girls,  men  and  women,  are  all  equally  in- 
tent on  one  thing :  earning  a  living,  the  woman  no 
more  relying  on  man's  protection  than  the  man  relying 
upon  hers.  Now,  a  woman  cannot  secure  economic 
independence  except  by  giving  herself  to  work  with 
the  same  single  eye  and  determination  that  a  man 
gives  to  his  work.  A  man  does  not  work  with  one 
eye  on  his  trade,  and  another  on  the  chance  of  a 
woman  turning  up  who  will  take  him  from  his  work 
and  keep  him  ;  and  when  a  woman  is  equally  de- 
pendent on  her  work,  and  has  no  security  for  her 
maintenance  beyond  it,  she  will  have  to  devote  herseli 
to  her  trade  or  profession  with  just  the  same  sense  oi 
its  permanent  necessity  as  a  man  has. 

But  complete  economic  independence  is  not  acquired 
in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  It  has  to  be  worked  for. 
A  working  man  who  wishes  to  rise  in  his  trade  serves 
a  serious  apprenticeship  to  it,  and  hopes  one  day  to  be 
foreman  or  overseer,  and  struggles  to  rise  above  the 
dead  level.  And  a  professional  man  knows  that  he 
must  devote  the  twenties  to  acquiring  that  experience 
which  the  thirties  will  consolidate,  so  that  he  may 
attain  that  security  of  position  in  his  profession  which, 
if  it  has  not  come  in  the  forties,  will  not  come  at  all. 
And  a  tradesman  has  the  same  long  row  to  hoe  it 
he  wishes  "  to  build  up  a  business."  And  in  the  effort 
to  attain  economic  independence  a  woman  will  have  to 
abandon  herself  to  the  pursuit  of  her  trade  or  profession 
with  just  the  same  assiduity  and  concentration  and 
patience.  But  a  woman's  effective  marriageable  period 
is  much  shorter  than  a  man's.  He  may  not  marry  till 
he  is  thirty-three  or  four — that  is,  till  he  sees  his 
economic  independence  fairly  assured  —  and  still  be  a 
young  husband,  but  a  woman  who  does  not  marry 


A  NEW  SLAVEBY  253 


till  she  is  thirty-three  or  four  has  let  her  best  years  slip 
by,  and  is  marrying  at  a  bad  age  fronn  most  points  of 
view.  But  she  cannot  afford,  in  a  state  of  society 
which  gives  women  no  legal  security  for  man's  pro- 
tection, to  give  up  her  trade  or  profession  within  a 
few  years  after  she  has  entered  upon  it,  and  just  when 
she  is  beginning  to  feel  the  ground  a  little  firm  under 
her  feet. 

And  when  the  wear  and  tear  of  a  keen  competitive 
struggle  was  playing  havoc  with  her  looks  she  would, 
so  far  as  her  attractiveness  to  man  is  concerned,  have 
lost  ground  that  nothing  could  make  up.  For  one  may 
still  suppose  that  the  last  thing  in  human  nature  to 
change  would  be  the  attraction  of  sex  to  sex — when 
that  fails,  humankind  will  fail  too.  And  a  man  will 
not  be  attracted  to  a  woman  because  she  has  a  good 
head  for  figures,  or  is  a  competent  electric  mechanic  or 
the  head  of  the  export  department  of  a  large  bacon- 
curing  house.  Unless  he  is  to  become  the  "  parasite  " 
(which  is  one  possible  development  of  the  situation)  he 
would  be  attracted  by  the  appeal  that  a  woman  makes 
to  a  man  as  a  physically  desirable  creature.  But  the 
effect  of  her  striving  for  economic  independence  would 
I  be  to  carry  her  on  in  industry  to  the  time  when  her 
1  sex-attractiveness  was  a  diminishing  quantity,  and  by 
the  time  she  had  attained  her  economic  independence 
she  might  find  that  she  would  have  to  rely  upon  it  not 
during  the  twenties  and  thirties,  but  during  the  forties 
and  the  fifties  and  the  sixties  too.  And  this  vital 
consideration  is  ignored  both  by  Suffragists  and 
Feminists,  whose  new  era  is  apparently  to  be  a 
golden  age  when  all  women  will  be  young  and 
entering  blithely  into  ready-made  and  lucrative  posi- 
tions, with  none  old,  and  solitary,  and  living  in 
penurious  industrial  drudgery.  The  inequalities  be- 
tween the  sexes,  in  short,  extend  even  to  the  attraction 
that  one  sex  has  for  the  other  ;  for  a  man's  effective 
period  as  a  suitor  (if  I  may  still  so  put  it)  is  a  good 
deal  longer  than  a  woman's  effective  period  as  the 
wooed  (if  that  word  is  not  most  incongruously  oId< 


234 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


fashioned  in  such  a  connection).  And,  to  interrupt  the 
argument  for  a  moment,  one  other  effect  would  be  seen. 
The  average  age  at  which  a  woman  marries  now  is  25, 
but  she  would  not  have  acquired  her  economic  in- 
dependence at  twenty- five,  or  even  at  thirty,  so  that 
she  would  reduce  by  so  many  years  the  conceptive 
period  of  her  married  life  ;  and  this  would  tell  its  own 
tale  upon  an  already  diminishing  birth-rate. ' 

The  Children  ? 

But  it  would  be  expected  that  many  women, 
especially  those  in  whom  the  maternal  instinct  or  the 
affections  were  strong,  would  seek  the  first  opportunity 
of  escaping  from  the  independence  which  had  been 
"  secured  "  for  the  sex.  But  they  could  escape  from  it 
only  by  marriage  (or  other  alliance)  with  a  man  who 
was  not  bound  to  support  her.  Nevertheless,  she 
would  take  the  risk,  and  she  would  become  wife  or 
companion  under  an  uncertain  tenure.  For,  with 
women  economically  independent,  and  man  relieved  of 
his  legal  obligations  to  woman  altogether,  I  do  not 
quite  see  where  marriage,  as  now  we  know  it,  would 
"  come  in."  Nor  do  I  see  where  the  children  would  be 
considered  in  such  a  scheme  of  domestic  duality,  and 
no  doubt  the  proverb  would  arise,  "  Children  will 
happen  in  the  worst  regulated  families."  But  in  a 
population  of  indiscriminate  male  and  female  in- 
dustrialism children  would  indeed  be  looked  upon  as 
encumbrances.  For  the  mere  fact  of  giving  birth  to 
them,  apart  from  any  question  of  looking  after  them 
maternally,  would  be  a  serious  interruption  of  the 
business  or  labour  of  a  woman  who  had  no  security  for 
her  livelihood  but  her  ov.-n  exertions.  Indeed,  if  we 
try  to  imagine  what  would  be  the  impossible  position  of 

'  The  Registrar-General's  report  for  1909  says  :  "  There  are 
sufficient  grounds  for  stating  that  during  tSe  past  thirty  years 
approximately  14  per  cent  of  the  decline  in  the  birth-rate  (based 
upon  the  proportion  of  births  to  the  female  population  aged  15  to 
45  years)  is  due  to  the  decrease  in  the  propcrtion  of  married 
women- in  tbe  feminine  p'^pM^ation  of  conceptive  ages." 


A  NEW  SLAVERY  255 


man  as  a  worker  if  he  were  under  the  same  liability  and 
disability  in  regard  to  the  birth  of  children,  we  can 
begin  to  estimate  how  children  would  be  regarded  by  a 
generation  of  women  who  had  to  earn  their  own  living 
absolutely.  And  it  might  then  dawn  upon  men  and 
women  that  the  maintenance  and  the  j^rotection  that 
the  male  gives  to  the  female,  were  not  a  badge  and 
sign  of  her  inferiority,  and  did  not  give  her  the  status 
of  a  parasite,  but  that  they  were  the  only  conditions 
under  which  a  race  could  be  properly  reared.  It  might 
then  be  seen  also  that  home  and  family  life  depended 
upon  man  shouldering  the  burden  and  responsibility  for 
it.  It  might  then  be  realised  that  the  only  thing  that 
made  life  tolerable  to  the  woman  who  wished  to  have 
children  was  that  assurance  for  her  comfort  and  well- 
being,  the  minimum  of  which  is  assured  to  her  by  the 
law  and  the  maximum  of  which  is  limited  only  by 
her  husband's  resources. 

But  there  would  be  one  further  complication  of  the 
relations  between  the  sexes.  In  their  effort  to  secure 
economic  independence  for  themselves,  women  would 
double  the  available  labour  in  the  country,  and  so 
enormously  increase  the  competition  which,  as  things 
are,  make  life  a  struggle  for  most  men.  It  is  hardly 
likely  that  enough  new  trades  would  be  opened  up  by 
and  for  women  to  absorb  them  or  any  considerable 
proportion  of  them.  They  would  therefore  compete 
with  man  in  those  trades  already  existing.  Well,  the 
Wages  Fund  theory  is  exploded,  but  the  amount  of 
wages  paid  does  still  depend  upon  the  amount  of 
employment  available.  But  if  men  are  sharing  the 
industrial  world  with  women,  they  must  also  share  with 
women  the  wages  paid  by  the  industrial  world.  And 
so  what  is  now  earned  by  men  alone  would  be  reduced 
by  the  extra  amount  secured  by  women  to  provide  for 
their  economic  independence,  making  the  proper  allow- 
ance for  those  women  already  in  employment  now.' 

'  "  The  fierce  struggle  of  women  to  wrest  the  labour  field  from 
men,  to  undersell  their  own  husbands,  fathers,  and  brothers,  is  a 
monstrous  perversion  alike  cf  industrial,  domestic,  and  mora' 


256  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


The  New  Slavery. 

Under  such  an  industrial  warfare  I  do  not  see  many 
men  proposing  marriage ;  but  I  do  see  many  men  and 
women  putting  their  wages  together  to  effect  a  little 
economy  in  the  cost  of  living.  In  short,  I  see  a  lot  of 
temporary  arrangements,  a  good  deal  of  "  setting  up 
house  together,"  but  very  few  marriages  (what  would 
marriage  have  to  offer?)  and  maternity  avoided  like  the 
plague. 

But  if  it  be  said,  "  Oh,  things  wouldn't  be  so  bad  as 
that.  People  would  still  get  married  in  the  old  way," 
then  nothing  would  have  happened  beyond  the  fact 
that  woman  had  surrendered  the  chiefest  security  of 
wife  and  mother  (at  the  bidding,  too,  of  many  ladies 
who  are  neither)  and  that  support  and  maintenance 
which  Feminists  call  "parasitism."  And  if  it  be  said, 
"  So  that  is  all  that  man's  devotion  to  woman  means !  He 
will  not  give  his  support  voluntarily,  but  only  if  the  law 
compels  him  !  "  then  the  answer  is  that  as  things  are  the 
man  does  voluntarily,  for  that  obligation  is  quite  pre- 
sent to  his  mind  when  he  gets  married,  and  after  he  is 
married  he  does  his  duty  as  a  matter  of  course  without 
thinking  of  the  law  ;  but  the  law  is  there  only  to  give 
the  woman  a  final  guarantee  of  his  support  and  main- 
tenance, and  it  is  man-made  law.  But  a  state  of  society 
in  which  woman  was  man's  industrial  rival  and  a  hus- 
band had  no  liability  to  maintain  a  wife,  is  obviously  a 
state  of  society  not  favourable  to  the  cultivation  of  any 
domestic  duty.    Woman  would  thus  find  out  that  she 

order.  A  society  which  continues  to  develop  in  this  line  is  lost." 
— Mr  Frederic  Harrison,  "Realities  and  Ideals." 

The  following  letter  which  appeared  in  The  Standard  of 
November  21,  191 1,  is  also  to  the  point,  as  showing  what  happens 
already : — 

"  Sir, — If  women  obtain  the  vote,  would  they  go  in  for  high 
wages,  or  would  they  still  undersell  their  services  as  they  do  in 
the  drug  trade  ?  I  can  point  out  hundreds  who  accept  5s.  or  los.  a 
week,  and  keep  out  of  employment  a  male  assistant  who  would 
earn  355.  a  week.  H.  C.  Beddixg, 

Hon.  Sec.  Chemists'  Assistants' 
Reform  Union." 


A  ^^EW  SLAVERY  257 


had  obtained  her  political  freedom  at  the  expense  of 
industrial  servitude,  and  her  economic  independence  at 
the  expense  of  a  degradation  in  her  status  as  a  woman. 
She  would  find  that  she  had  clutched  at  a  fresh  liberty 
and  grasped  a  new  slavery.  For  man  would  still  want 
the  companionship  of  woman,  and  he  would  obtain  it 
from  the  vantage  point  of  a  superior  financial  position, 
in  the  free  and  open  market  of  sex  equality. 

But  there  is  one  other  prospect  that  would  be 
opened  up  by  woman's  effort  to  obtain  economic 
independence.  Seeing  where  it  was  leading  to, 
finding  himself  subjected  to  a  competition  which 
simply  maimed  but  did  not  kill  his  own  economic 
independence,  wearied  of  a  state  of  society  in  which 
two  individual  units  grew  where  one  home  had  grown 
before,  man  might  suddenly  decide  to  turn  the  whole 
crazy  fabric  over  by  a  power  that  has  nothing  to  do 
with  votes  for  women  and  rates  or  taxes,  but  which 
illustrates  the  whole  difference  between  to  wish  and 
to  will,  between  "  Votes  for  Women  "  and  the  minds 
of  men. 

And  now  we  can  endeavour  to  get  to  the  root  of  the 
matter.  So  far,  we  have  considered  merely  the  con- 
sequences accepted  by  orthodox  Sufifragism,  but  now  it 
remains  to  be  seen  to  what  land  of  promise  the 
Feminists,  who  are  the  advance  guard  of  Suffragism, 
are  beckoning  their  sisters. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


The  Great  Experiment. 

FEMINIST  INDIVIDUALISM— THE  FALLACY  OF  EQUAL- 
ITY— THE  DUALITY  OF  MANKIND — SUFFRAGISM  AND 
FEMINISM  —  THE  FEMINIST  CREED  —  THE  "  KEPT  " 
WIFE  —  THE  VAST  READJUSTMENT — BACK  TO  NATURE 

—  THE  HIGHER  LIFE  OF  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS  — 
"WOMANLINESS  MUST  GO  "  —  "MARRIAGE  MUST  GO" 

—  THE  PRICE  OF  EQUALITY  —  THE  HUMANIST  AS 
PROPHET — THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT — RESPICE  FINEM. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


The  Great  Experiment. 

The  root  area  of  a  tree  corresponds  generally  to  its 
branches — whatever  is  in  the  air  has  its  justification  in 
the  earth.  And  Feminism,  a  tree  of  sudden  growth 
which  spreads  its  branches  so  wide  as  to  cast  a  new 
shadow  on  the  earth,  has  its  roots  running  so  widely  in 
the  soil  of  revolutionary  thought  that  it  is  impossible, 
at  the  present  stage  of  its  growth,  to  trace  out  its  roots 
to  their  ultimate  fibrils  or  radicles.  But  we  can  at 
least  try  to  get  down  to  the  main-root,  and  see  of  what 
it  consists,  and  make  some  little  exploration  of  its 
circumference. 

For  now,  putting  behind  us  all  the  minor  points  of 
this  controversy,  and  even  making  the  effort  to  be 
no  longer  controversial — putting  in  the  background  all 
such  questions  as  the  relation  of  votes  to  taxes,  the 
abstract  "  right  "  to  a  vote,  the  question  of  the  fairness 
or  the  unfairness  of  man-made  laws,  and  all  those 
arguments  which  methodically  advance  from  each  side 
to  confront  each  other  on  the  purely  political  issue — 
leaving  behind  us  for  good  all  that  obligatory  but 
somewhat  tiresome  logic-chopping  in  which  even  Anti- 
suffragists  are  doomed  to  engage  ever  since  the  curse  of 
Mill  descended  on  this  matter  and  he  started  the 
dreary  game  by  evolving  two  abstractions  from  his 
inner  consciousness  which  he  called  man  and  woman — 
even  putting  behind  us  the  Vote  as  achieved,  let  us 
now  look  at  what  it  will  achieve  in  turn  :  let  us  con- 
front and  examine  the  great  experiment  of  Feminism 
which  is  to  follow  upon  the  rash  adventure  of 
Suffragism. 

The  soil  in  which  the  tree  of  Suffragist-Feminism 
grows  is  that  of  a  revolutionary  conception  of  the 

261 


262 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


real  functions  and  inter-relations  of  men  and  women. 
Anti-suffragists  think  and  maintain  that  it  is  a 
revolutionary  conception.  Feminists  and  Suffragists 
contend  that  it  is  merely  an  evolutionary  conception — 
a  development  from  a  state  and  a  conception  imperfect 
and  unjust  to  one  that  is  perfect  and  free  and  in  itself 
progressive.  And  that  claim,  and  not  such  truly 
pettifogging  considerations  as  the  constitutional  im- 
plication of  a  dog  licence,  is  the  claim  by  which 
Suffragism  stands  to  make  itself  good,  or  to  fail  be- 
cause it  cannot  make  itself  good. 

Feminist  Individualism. 

Now  the  Suffragist  and  Feminist  both  assume  that 
men  and  women  are  not  complementary  beings,  together 
making  the  whole  human  being,  with  separate  spheres 
of  work  and  function,  distinct  secondary  sexual 
characteristics,  and  different  moral,  mental  and  tem- 
peramental attributes.  They  agree  that  there  are 
certain  primary  differences  of  physical  structure  and 
function,  which  alone  constitute  sex,  but  assert  that 
those  differences  are  small  and  unimportant  in  relation 
to  the  general  similarity  ;  and  that  the  sexual  nature 
of  a  woman  is  neither  more  nor  less  pronounced  than 
that  of  a  man  ;  and  that  therefore  they  are  equal 
beings,  in  a  common  humanity,  except  in  so  far  as  one 
function  is  concerned,  the  function  of  reproduction, 
which  (they  contend)  is  in  any  case,  an  optional 
function,  and  should  not  be  allowed  to  interfere  with 
the  individualism  of  the  individual  unless  she  wishes  it. 
But  here  we  immediately  come  to  one  sexual  difference 
which  no  Feminist  philosophy  can  argue  away  ;  for 
whether  a  man  does  or  not  exercise  that  function  has 
no  effect  whatever  upon  his  capacities  ;  but  if  a  woman 
exercises  that  function  it  lays  her  under  a  disability 
wherein  she  is  immediately  at  a  disadvantage  in 
relation  to  man,  as  an  efficient  worker,  to  say  nothing 
of  her  further  disabilities  as  a  rival  of  man  in  all  the 
wide  sphere  of  life  if  she  also,  once  a  mother,  extends 
her  maternal  care  and  attention  to  a  young  being 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  263 


which  should  draw  its  sustenance  from  her,  and  which, 
taking  longer  to  reach  maturity  than  the  young  of 
any  other  animal,  needs  what  the  young  of  no  other 
animal  needs.  And  if  woman  does  not  exercise  that 
function  then  her  individualism  is  indulged  at  the 
expense  of  racial  necessity.  But  the  Feminist  denies 
that  that  racial  necessity  ought  to  influence  in  the  least 
degree  the  freedom  of  the  individual,  and  so  we  are 
forced  either  to  admit  that  the  individual  is  more  im- 
portant than  the  race  or  to  assert  that  in  any  conflict 
between  individualism  and  the  race  the  individual  will 
succumb.  For,  considered  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
race,  the  individual  can  only  "  live  her  own  life  "  once. 
If  she  wishes  to  live  her  own  life  to  the  exclusion  of 
any  consideration  for  the  life  that  must  either  renew 
itself  or  die,  then  Nature  takes  her  at  her  own  word. 
She  lives  her  own  life — and  that  is  the  end  of  her. 

The  Fallacy  of  Equality. 

But  the  Humanist  (for  the  term  Anti-suffragist  be- 
comes nonsensically  inadequate  to  confront  the  term 
"  Feminist  "  in  a  revolutionary  matter  of  which  the  de- 
mand for  the  Suffrage  is  rather  the  letter  than  the 
spirit)  the  Humanist  believes  that  in  such  a  conception 
of  woman  lies  the  whole  heresy  of  Suffragism  and 
Feminism  alike.  And  he  traces  that  heresy  to  a  false 
estimate  of  equality.  He  argues  that  where  there  is 
difference  in  duality  there  cannot  be  equality,  for  things 
that  differ  cannot  be  equal  ;  the  Feminist  then  sees 
in  his  denial  of"  equality  "  an  implication  of  inferiority; 
to  which  he  replies  that  the  human  sexes  cannot  be 
distinguished  by  terms  of  inferiority  or  superiority,  but 
that  they  are  distinguished  by  the  fact  of  difference. 
And  he  believes  that  the  false  importance  that  the 
Feminist  attributes  to  equality  is  merely  her  protest 
against  the  imagined  implication  of  inferiority. 

So  he  points  out  that  the  idea  of  equality  being  a 
natural  or  even  desirable  condition  is  negatived  by  all 
creation,  for  all  creation  attests  inequality,  and  seems 
tO'  take  the  most  extraordinary  pains  to  express  in- 


264  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


equality  and  diversity  in  all  its  works.  The  stars  in  the 
firmament  differ  not  alone  in  their  distance  from  us, 
but  in  their  own  magnitude  ;  sun,  planets  and  satellites 
all  shout  unequality.  Trees  and  plants  of  the  same 
species,  even  when  they  grow  side  by  side  in  the  same 
soil,  and  are  warmed  by  the  same  sun,  are  unequal. 
Even  the  two  familiar  peas  in  a  pod  would  reveal  great 
differences  if  looked  at  minutely,  and  one  egg  is  really 
unlike  another.  And  amongst  men  and  women  in- 
equality, not  only  of  degree  but  of  nature,  is  simply 
rampant.  No  man  ever  born  was  exactly  like  another, 
and  the  inequalities  of  strength,  of  intellect,  and  of 
temperament  even  in  the  children  of  the  same  parents 
are  amongst  the  most  fascinating  facts  of  life.  Equality, 
therefore,  not  only  seems  undesirable  but  unattainable. 
So  far  from  it  being  a  divine  ordinance  that  we  should 
all  be  similar  and  equal,  the  divinity  that  shaped  our 
ends  hewed  us  all  differently.  And  the  Humanist  bel- 
ieves that  the  equality  which  Feminism  first  proclaims 
and  then  wishes  to  strive  for  is  not  only  undesirable  but 
impossible — that  what  it  proclaims  is  contrary  to  the 
truth  and  what  it  strives  for  is  unattainable,  even  though 
disaster  may  follow  from  the  very  striving. 

And  so,  seeing  that  diversity  and  difference  and  not 
equality  and  sameness,  are  found  in  all  created  things, 
in  women  as  amongst  themselves  and  in  men  as 
amongst  themselves,  he  sees  no  discordance  or  want 
of  harmony  in  the  conception  of  woman  and  man  as 
the  different  halves  of  the  human  whole.  And  though 
the  word  "  equality "  is  imported  into  the  matter  by 
the  Suffragist  and  Feminist,  the  Humanist  admits  that 
the  two  halves  of  a  whole  must  indeed  be  "  equal,"  but 
that  the  sum  total  of  each  respective  equal  is  to  be 
computed  by  the  calculations  of  different  capacities ; 
and  he  argues  that  to  speak  of  men  and  women  as 
equals  in  the  sense  in  which  one  pound  of  lead  is  equal 
to  another  pound  of  lead  is  nonsense  ;  but  that  to 
speak  of  them  as  equals  in  the  total  sum  of  human 
existence,  as  Art  and  Science  may  be  said  to  be  equal 
in  the  total  sum  of  human  achievement,  or  as  the  moral 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  265 


sense  and  the  intellectual  sense  may  be  said  to  be  of 
equal  value  and  importance  in  the  human  nature,  is 
the  right  way  of  looking  at  both  the  difference  and 
the  "  equality  "  of  man  and  woman. 

The  Duality  of  Mankind. 

And,  beyond  this  natural  justification  for  difference,  he 
points  to  the  actual  difference  of  function  between  the 
dynamic  and  creative  masculine  force  and  the  conserv- 
ing feminine  force,  to  establish  completely  the  duality 
of  mankind  in  something  more  than  physical  attributes 
and  physical  functions.    And  he  argues  that  though 
men  and  women  in  the  beginning  may  have  been  dis- 
tinguished only  by  these  physical  differences,  the  whole 
trend  and  effect  of  civilisation  has  been  to  emphasise 
these  differences,  and  that  the  biological  evolution  of 
man  and  woman  conforms  to  the  general  biological 
law  of  development  by  differentiation  of  function  ;  and 
that  by  the  differences  more  than  by  the  likenesses 
between  the  two  is  the  race  best  perpetuated.  And 
if  it  is  then  said  that,  according  to  such  a  proposition, 
the  race  would  be  best  served  if  all  men  were  muscular 
giants  and  all  women  physically  degenerate,  then  he 
would  reply  that  it  is  just  as  possible  to  get  too  far 
from  Nature  as  it  is  to  deprive  ourselves  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  civilised  progress  by  going  back  to  it. 
But  all  these  contentions  of  the  Humanist  are  con- 
temptuously brushed  aside  by  the  Feminist,  who  still 
sees  in  them,  not  the  desire  of  man  to  keep  the 
balance  of  sex-differentiation  even,  in  the  interests  of 
his  race,  but  the  arrogance  and  egotism  of  man  holding 
woman  in  perpetual  subjection.    And  so  we  can  come 
to  consider  more  closely  how  Feminism  desires  to 
secure  her  freedom,  and  then  what  humanity  may  be 
like  when   an   unduly  self-conscious   and  rebellious 
Feminism  has  attempted   to   destroy  the   basis  of 
civilised  humanity,  and  to  start  the  road  backward  to 
that  natural  state  from  which  civilisation  has  been 
either  the  escape  (as  the  Humanist  thinks),  or  the 
disastrous  departure,  as  the  Feminist  apparently  thinks. 


266 


WOMAN  ADBIFT 


Suffragism  and  Feminism. 

And  at  this  point,  before  coming  to  the  full  develop- 
ment of  Feminism,  it  will  be  necessary  again  to  establish 
the  connection  between  Suffragism  and  Feminism  and 
to  show  that  the  first-named  is  the  parent  of  the  last. 
The  connection  is  sufficiently  clear,  even  viewed  as  a 
logical  process,  for  Feminism  is  only  Suffragism  carry- 
ing to  its  logical  end  the  equalitarian  theory  on  which 
the  Suffragist  bases  her  logical  claim  to  the  vote. 
The  connection  is  certainly  that  of  logical  if  not  of 
spiritual  development.  The  stages  by  which  the 
matronly  and  political  Suffragist  merges  into  the 
modern  militant  Suffragist,  until  the  advanced  Femi- 
nist is  reached,  are  much  the  same  as  those  by 
which  the  Liberal  is  merged  into  the  Radical  and 
the  Radical  into  the  Socialist.  Even  the  differences 
are  very  much  on  the  same  plane,  for  whilst  the 
Liberal  may  still  take  his  stand  on  Individualism,  his 
humanitarian  impulses  draw  him  towards  Socialism, 
which  repudiates  Individualism  altogether  ;  and  though 
the  matronly  Suffragist  takes  her  stand  on  the  im- 
portance of  the  maternal  function  and  the  privileged 
position  that  marriage  and  maternity  give  to  wives, 
the  logical  extension  of  her  creed  of  perfect  equality 
with  man  carries  her  into  the  company  of  those  who 
see  in  the  wife's  privileged  position  the  whole  ex- 
planation of  woman's  subjection,  and  who  point  out 
that  the  equality  at  which  the  woman's  movement  aims 
must  modify  marriage,  home,  and  the  function  of 
maternity  profoundly.  The  connection  between  Suffra- 
gist and  Feminist  is  also  established  by  the  fact  that 
Feminists  are  all  Suffragists,  and  the\-  call  themselves 
the  advance  guard  of  the  army,  which  is  exactly  what 
they  are.  But  the  point  of  ascertainable  continuity 
between  the  most  rudimentary  Suffragism  and  the 
most  advanced  Feminism  is  seen  at  the  demand  for 
the  economic  independence  of  woman,  which  is  common 
to  all  Suffragists  and  all  Feminists  alike,  although  in 
the  matronly  Suffragist  it  takes  the  shape  of  a  demand 
for  "  wages  for  wives." 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  267 


The  Feminist  Creed. 

The  best  statement  I  have  yet  seen  of  Feminism, 
put  in  a  paragraph  and  not  distributed  throughout  a 
volume,  is  contained  in  the  foreword  of  the  first  issue 
of  a  new  Feminist  paper,  The  Freewotnan,  an  ably 
written  paper  which  expresses  the  spirit  of  Feminism, 
leaving  to  other  organs  of  the  cause  the  political  letter 
of  the  two  "  isms."  When  I  say  "  the  best  statement," 
I  do  not  mean  the  best  only  for  my  purpose  of  showing 
the  aims  and  spirit  of  Feminism,  but  the  statement 
which  best  expresses  the  philosophic  and  intellectual 
basis  of  Feminism.  It  is  true  that  even  this  statement 
is  obscured  by  the  heresy  of  man's  contempt  for  w'oman, 
and  perhaps  it  is  impossible  ever  to  convince  any 
Feminist  or  Suffragist  that  if  the  present  age  allows, 
and  future  ages  vindicate,  their  revolution,  the  Human- 
ists who  oppose  it  have  merely  been  the  unprogressive 
and  unenlightened  opponents  of  evolution  and  not  the 
perverse  and  contemptuous  opponents  of  woman.  But 
the  writer  is  good  enough  to  allow  that  "  the  opponents 
of  Freewomen  are  not  actuated  by  spleen  or  by  stupidity 
but  by  dread." 

"This  dread  is  founded  upon  ages  of  experience  with  a  being 
who,  however  well  loved,  has  been  known  to  be  an  inferior,  and 
who  has  accented  all  the  conditions  of  inferiors.  Women, 
women's  intelli<fence,  and  women's  judgments  have  always  been 
regarded  with  more  or  less  secret  contempt ;  and  when  woman 
now  speaks  of '  equality,'  all  the  natural  contempt  which  a  higher 
order  feels  for  a  lower  when  it  presumes,  bursts  out  into  the  open. 
This  contempt  rests  upon  quite  honest  and  sound  instinct  .  .  . 
(and)  it  is  for  would-be  Freewomen  to  realise  that  for  them  this 
contempt  is  the  healthiest  thinj;  in  the  world,  and  that  those  who 
express  it  honestly  feel  it  ;  that  those  opponents  have  argued 
quite  soundly  that  women  have  allowed  themselves  to  be  used, 
ever  since  there  has  been  any  record  of  them  ;  and  that  if  women 
had  had  higher  uses  of  their  own  they  would  not  have  foregone 
them." 

That  is  not  quite  "  the  best  statement "  of  the  atti- 
tude of  man  to  woman,  but,  at  anyrate,  it  furnishes  the 
enlightenment  we  need  as  to  the  motive  force  of 
Feminism.  We  do  not  accept  its  truth,  but  as  it  is 
impossible  to  understand  Feminism  without  knowing 


268  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


what  its  motive  force  is,  we  ought  to  be  grateful  for 
that  enlightenment.  It  gives,  not  the  point  of  view  of 
Feminism  so  much  as  its  feeling — the  core  of  Feminism. 
If  it  were  a  point  of  view,  it  could  be  argued  with  ;  but 
it  is  both  above  and  below  argument — above  because  a 
feeling  sincerely  held  must  be  respected  even  if,  being 
below  argument,  it  cannot  be  uprooted. 

The  next  passage  shows  that  Feminism,  at  any  rate, 
has  progressed  in  other  things  than  a  programme 
beyond  elementary  Suffragism.  It  drops  the  con- 
tention that  woman  was  at  one  time  man's  "  glorious 
equal,"  and  abandons  the  argument  that  Abesses  and 
Boadicea  and  "  the  woman  voters  of  Lyme  Regis " 
prove  that  man  has  been  a  wanton  usurper  : 

"  How  women  have  fallen  into  this  position  is  a  moot  point. 
It  is  yet  to  be  decided  whether  they  ever  did  'fall' — the  reason 
why  is  yet  to  be  assigned.  It  is  quite  beside  the  pomt  to  say 
women  were  '  crushed  '  down.  If  they  were  not  '  down  '  in  them- 
selves— i.e.,  weaker  in  mind — no  equal  force  could  have  crushed 
them  '  down  "...  Those  who  are  '  down  '  are  inferior.  When 
change  takes  place  in  the  thing  itself — i.e.,  when  it  becomes 
equal  or  superior — by  the  nature  of  its  own  being  it  rises.  So 
woman,  if  ever  equal,  must  have  sunk  on  the  ground  of  inferiority. 
Whether  this  inferiority  arose  through  the  disabilities  arising 
out  of  child-bearing,  or  whether  it  arose  through  women  giving 
up  the  game — i.e.,  bartering  themselves  for  the  sake  of  the 
protection  of  men — it  is  difficult  to  say.  Probably  in  her  desire 
for  love  continued,  for  protection,  for  keeping  the  man  near  her, 
she  stepped  into  the  roie  of  making  herself  useful  to  him,  serving 
him,  givmg  him  always  more  love  and  more,  more  service  and 
more,  until  on  the  one  hand,  she  acquired  the  complete  "servant' 
mind,  and  he,  on  the  other  hand,  gained  the  realisation  that  her 
'usefulness'  was  of  greater  moment  to  him  than  the  fret  of  the 
tie  which  retained  him." 

As  I  am  not  at  this  point  concerned  with  combatting 
the  doctrine  of  Feminism,  but  with  giving  some 
exposition  of  it,  I  have  nothing  to  say  controversially 
of  that  passage  except  to  remark  that  in  that  con- 
ception of  the  process  of  woman's  enslavement,  nothing 
is  attributed  to  the  call  or  claim  of  maternity.  The 
child  is  merely  the  mechanical  impediment  to  her 
freedom — it  is  not  maternal  care  but  bare  parturition 


THE  GREAT  EXPEBIMENT  269 


that  enchained  her,  and  it  is  not  her  child,  but  "  him," 
for  whom  she  has  spent  herself.  Maternal  nurture  is 
left  entirely  out  of  the  question  of  "  duty  "  or  "  self- 
sacrifice,"  or  the  process  of  her  domestic  subjection  and 
sex-segregation.  And  then  we  get  the  concrete  state- 
ment of  the  aim  of  Feminism  : 

"At  the  present  time,  when  man's  adventurous  and  experi- 
mental mind  has  made  much  of  her  '  usefulness '  useless,  woman 
finds  herself  cut  off  from  her  importantly  useful  sphere,  equipped 
with  the  mind  of  a  servant,  and  with  the  reputation  of  one.  She 
thus  finds  herself  in  a  position  in  which  she  is  compelled  to  do 
one  of  two  things — i.e.,  remain  solely  as  the  man's  protected 
female,  or  making  what  may  or  may  not  be  a  successful  effort, 
endeavour  to  take  her  place  as  a  master." 

And  so  Feminism  looks  to  see  women  "  recognised 
as  '  masters '  among  other  '  masters,'  considering  their 
sex  just  as  much  an  incidental  concern  as  men  con- 
sider theirs."  I  do  not  think  the  philosophy  of 
Feminism  can  be  more  succinctly  put.  It  does  not  so 
much  overleap  the  barriers  of  sex  as  knock  them  down  ; 
though  in  the  leap  over  the  human  gestatory  period 
and  the  years  of  maternal  nurture,  a  bigger  leap  is 
taken  in  philosophic  aim  than  can  be  accomplished  by 
physiological  fact,  if  maternity  is  still  to  observe  its 
function. 

The  "  Kept"  Wife. 

The  bondwomen  are  then  told  whence  their  sub- 
ordination arises  : 

"  It  can  only  be  accounted  for  upon  an  understanding  of  the 
stupefying  influence  of  security  with  irresponsibility.  And  this 
is  what  '  protection  '  always  means  for  the  '  protected  '  .  .  .  By 
securing  the  protection  of  a  man,  a  woman  rids  herself  of  the 
responsibility  of  earning  her  own  living." 

And  so  the  abolition  of  the  "  protected  "  position  of 
women  is  the  first  item  in  the  programme  of  Feminism 
— the  first  article  of  its  foundation,  the  corner-stone  of 
the  temple. 

But  Feminism  also  has  "a  new  morality,"  and  from 
one  exposition  of  it  we  learn  that  "  to  the  door  of  the 
'  legitimate  mother '  and  to  the  '  protection '  accorded 


2/0  WOMAN  ADBIFT 


her  by  popular  sentiment,  is  to  be  traced  the  responsi 
bility  for  most  of  the  social  ills  from  which  we  suffer." 
And  so  "  when  women  come  to  regard  the  '  kept '  con- 
dition of  '  the  mother '  and  '  wife  '  with  as  much  horror 
as  they  regard  the  other  '  kept '  woman,  and  sometimes 
children,  whom  they  themselves  keep  religiously  out- 
side the  pale,  or  as  they  would  regard  a  male  lover  who 
sold  his  '  love '  for  tjoard  and  lodgings,  then — and 
never  until — shall  we  have  arrived  at  the  point  when 
Feminism  will  be  sure  of  itself  and  its  future."  Then 
this  writer,  expounding  a  new  morality,  goes  on  "to 
brush  away  a  few  of  the  sentimental  cobwebs  which 
men  and  women  have  spun  to  hide  the  naked  hideous- 
ness  of  the  kept  wife  and  mother  from  themselves"  :  — 

"  Motherhood,  when  legitimate,  has  had  an  emphasis  laid 
upon  its  sanctity  which  nothing  in  its  commonplace  nature  in  any 
way  justifies  .  .  .  The  truth  of  the  matter  is,  that  it  falls  upon 
the  human  female  to  reproduce  her  kmd  in  exactly  the  same  way 
as  it  falls  upon  the  females  throughout  creation  to  reproduce 
theirs  ...  As  we  are  now  living  in  a  period  which  tends  by 
general  consent  to  apotheosise  the  'mother,'  it  is  necessary  to  say 
that  while  we  believe  profoundly  in  the  '  momentousness '  of 
motherhood,  we  have  no  belief  in  its  sacro-sanctity." 

Having  destroyed  the  sentimental  cobwebs,  the  new 
moralist  then  returns  to  the  logical  consequences  of  the 
iniquity  of  "  kept "  wives.  Admitting  that  children 
more  intimately  appertain  to  a  woman  than  to  a  man  ; 
asserting  that  "  the  mother's  decree  as  to  their 
existence  should  precede  the  co-operation  of  the  father"; 
assigning  to  him  the  subsidiary  status  of  an  "  after- 
thought "  ;  and  hinting  that  biological  evolution  may 
even  contrive  to  make  him  unnecessary  altogether,  the 
Feminist  proceeds  : 

"Considering  therefore  that  children  .  .  .  belong  more  to  the 
woman  than  the  man,  considering,  too,  that  not  only  does  she 
need  them  more,  but  as  a  rule  wants  them  more  than  the  man, 
the  parental  situation  begins  to  present  elemenfs  of  humour  when 
the  woman  proceeds  to  fasten  upon  the  man,  in  return  for  the 
children  she  has  borne  him,  the  obligations  from  that  tfme  to 
the  end  of  her  days  of  full  financial  responsibility  not  only  for 
the  children's  existence  but  for  her  own  also." 

We  are  a  long  way  here  from  wages  for  wives  and 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  271 


the  marital-maternal  logical  view  that  the  "  bounds 
of  freedom "  for  man  should  be  made  narrower  yet. 
Indeed,  the  Feminist  positively  recognises,  in  her  clear 
view  of  the  logic  of  Suffragism  and  Feminism,  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  man's  side  to  the  case.  1  he 
writer  points  out  that  in  the  old  days  a  man  got  some- 
thing for  his  money — his  "  pride  of  possession  "  was 
flattered  by  having  mother  and  daughters  dependent 
on  him  and  respectful  to  him.  But  now,  with  revolting 
and  independent  daughters  and  Suffragist  wives,  there 
is  nothing  left  for  him  at  all — for  this  Feminist,  like  all 
others,  and  like  John  Stuart  Mill  himself,  rules  out 
of  consideration  the  satisfaction  and  motive  of  "self- 
sacrifice"  and  "duty"  that  a  man  also  shows  in  pro- 
viding for  a  family.    But  now, 

"  As  the  troupe  of  females  refuse  any  further  to  flatter  the 
man's  pride  by  continued  subjection,  the  man  gets  nothing  for 
his  pains.  Therefore,  if  the  kept  wives  do  not  in  the  future  offer 
to  deal  with  their  own  situation  in  their  own  way,  it  seems 
certain  that  men  will  be  compelled,  by  economic  forces  stronger 
than  their  traditional  sense  of  superior  protectiveness,  to  make 
the  situation  clear  to  the  women.  It  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  matter 
of  pride  in  the  decent  quality  of  human  nature  itself  that  the 
initial  strivings  in  such  a  vast  readjustment  should  have  come 
from  women  themselves." 

The  Vast  Readjustment. 

And  how  will  the  vast  readjustment  work  out  ?  The 
Feminist  is  resigned  to  the  present  generation  of 
motherly  souls  living  on  and  then  dying  out,  but  they 
will 

"  Bring  up  their  daughters  in  a  new  knowledge  of  conditions 
.  .  .  All  women  will  be  taught  that  througliout  their  lives  they 
will  be  regarded  as  responsible  for  their  own  upkeep,  and  will 
take  precautions  accordingly.  For  any  children  for  whose  bring- 
ing into  the  world  they  assume  the  responsibility,  they  will 
regard  themselves  as  being  finally  financially  responsible  .  .  . 
The  only  special  financial  recognition  which  they  can  expect  on 
account  of  any  disabilities  which  are  theirs  through  the  mother- 
ing of  the  race  would  be  that  of  a  State  insurance  which  would 
re-imburse  wages  lost  during  the  time  when  actual  child-bearing 
prevented  the  exchanging  of  services  in  the  professional  and 
commercial  world  for  monetary  return." 


272 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


There  we  have  the  economic  independence  of  woman 
carried  to  its  destined  end.    How  the  maternal  Suffra- 
gist will  square  the  logical  result  of  her  logical  claim 
for  a  vote  with  her  desire  for  more  maternal  protection, 
and  wages  for  wives,  I  do  not  know.   Lady  Aberconway 
(Lady  M'Laren)  has  devised  a  Woman's  Charter,  the 
conjugal  clauses  of  which  are  based  upon  the  assump- 
tion that  man  is  an  illimitable  ass,  for  the  patience 
with  which  he  may  be  expected  to  bear  his  marital 
burdens,  and  that  he  must  cheerfully  assent  to  fresh 
chains  being  riveted  upon  him,  by  what  the  logical 
Suffragist  calls  "  the  '  kept '  wife,"  in  the  name  of  the 
glory  of  motherhood,  although  the  glory  of  fatherhood 
is  represented  as  consisting  of  merely  the  duty  to  work 
and  provide.    Lady  Aberconway  also  included  the  un- 
married mother  in  her  Charter  :  "  I  propose  the  follow- 
ing law :  That  if  it  be  proved  that  any  man  has  been 
informed  of  the  expected  birth  of  his  illegitimate  child 
he  should  be  held  responsible  for  any  injury  either  to 
the  mother  or  to  the  child  arising  out  of  his  neglect  to 
provide  necessaries."    It  is  fortunate  that,  though  Lady 
M'Laren  can  "  propose  "  laws,  she  is  not  yet  in  a  posi- 
tion to  carry  them  out ;  for  a  preliminary  point  to  be 
legally  proved  in  such  a  matter  is  the  paternity  of  the 
child,  seeing  that  cases  have  been  known,  not  infre- 
quently, for  a  woman,  embarrassed  by  choice,  to  assign 
the  paternity  of  her  child  to  the  wrong  man.  But 
Feminism,  logical  and  strict  from  first  to  last,  insists 
that  if  woman  is  to  enjoy  the  "  glory  of  motherhood," 
she  must  be  prepared,  as  the  very  sign  of  her  freedom 
and  equality,  to  pay  her  price  for  it.    Man,  after  all, 
has  not  been  responsible  for  tl.:;  pains  of  her  travail. 
He  protects  and  keeps  her  in  order  to  lessen  them,  and 
therein  associates  himself  with  the  glory  of  her  mother- 
hood and  feels  some  glory  of  fatherhood  ;  but  equality 
cannot  mean  dependence,  and  the  Feminist  scouts  the 
notion  of  wages  for  wives  as  an  ignoble  evasion  of  the 
equality  of  woman  vvith  man  : 

"  Freewomen  ...  do  not  wish  by  law  or  by  any  other  means 
to  fasten  their  responsibilities  on  others.    They  themselves  arc 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  273 


prepared  to  shoulder  their  own.  They  bear  no  grudge  and 
claim  no  exemption  because  of  the  greater  burdens  which  Nature 
has  made  theirs  .  .  .  The  Freewoman's  position  is  to  see  that  she 
shall  be  in  a  position  to  bear  children  if  she  wants  them  without 
soliciting  maintenance  from  any  man,  whoever  he  may  be  .  .  . 
The  well-intentioned  people,  now  utterly  bewildered,  are  pre- 
tending that  housework  has  fallen  into  disrepute  because  it  is 
unpaid  work,  forgetting  that  the  best  of  the  worker's  work  is 
always  unpaid.  In  their  bewilderment  they  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  set  up  a  monstrous  theory  that  wives  should  become  the  paid 
employees  of  their  husbands  !  .  .  .  The  entire  theory  is  ludicrous 
in  its  absurdity.  No  !  Personal  relations  between  equals  must 
be  entered  into  on  terms  of  equality  .  .  .  Feminism  would  hold 
that  it  is  neither  desirable  nor  necessary  for  women,  when  they 
are  mothers,  to  leave  their  chosen  money-earning  work  for  any 
length  of  time." 

And  what  of  the  bare  industrial  fact  of  this  vast 
"  readjustment "  ? 

"We  are  compelled  to  recognise  that  we  are  not  asking  for  a 
small  thing,  but  a  thing,  which  in  the  sphere  of  industrial  labour 
alone  will  necessitate  as  much  reorganisation  as  would  be  forced 
upon  men  by  a  successful  German  invasion  and  occupation. 
Another  eight  million  women  seeking  paid  labour  in  the  land  ! 
That  is  not  a  small  thing  1 " 

It  is  not,  indeed.  But  so  statistically  stated,  the 
economic  independence  of  woman  will  enable  us  to 
realise  what  will  become  of  the  economic  independence 
of  man,  and  how  "the  equalisation  of  wages"  will  have 
to  be  made  by  bringing  down  men's  wages  to  the  level 
which  will  prevail  when  every  woman  is  "  economically 
independent"  as  the  price  of  votes  for  women  ;  and  we 
may  further  contemplate  the  effect  upon  the  marriage- 
rate  of  a  system  of  dual  industrialism  which  will  make 
bachelordom,  and  not  the  ability  to  maintain  a  wife 
and  family,  the  standard  of  man's  economic  independ- 
ence. But,  as  we  shall  see,  Feminism  does  not  con- 
template the  continuation,  as  a  necessary  thing,  of  the 
institution  of  marriage.  With  the  abolition  of  the 
"  kept  wife  "  will  be  involved  a  corresponding  abolition 
of  marriage  as  we  now  know  it. 

Back  to  Nature. 

But  before  entering  upon  the  new  morality  of  Femin- 


274 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


ism,  a  few  words  are  desirable  to  insist  upon  one  very 
clear  point  that  emerges  from  the  "economic  independ- 
ence" of  woman.  That  doctrine  precludes  altogether 
the  maternal  function  of  suckling  a  child.  In  the  new 
order,  all  the  children  will  be  artificially  fed.  The 
mother  will  be  asserting  her  economic  independence 
up  to  the  last  moment ;  she  will  become  a  mother ; 
and  then  go  back  to  her  economic  independence  as  soon 
as,  for  her  own  sake,  she  prudently  can.  For  there  is 
no  suggestion  that  women  will  be  employed  only  in 
such  capacities  as  will  enable  them  to  take  their 
children  to  their  work,  and  feed  them  every  two  or 
three  hours  as  the  "  kept "  wife  and  mother  does,  now 
that  she  is  in  a  state  of  "  subjection  "  to  man  and  stays 
at  home.  Well,  of  the  eugenics  of  this  matter,  and  of 
the  effect  upon  the  race,  and  of  whether  a  hand-reared 
race  will  be  worth  rearing,  I  am  not  competent  to  speak 
with  any  scientific  knowledge ;  but  I  believe  that  it  is 
held  by  both  enlightened  and  unenlightened  people 
that  at  least  for  the  first  year  of  a  child's  life  its 
mother  must  be  content  to  occupy  the  humiliating 
state  of  "subjection"  to  its  bodily  needs — that  is  if 
the  mother  have  any  sense  of  the  "  glory  of  mother- 
hood," and  the  child's  life  be  of  any  consequence.  But 
in  any  case  it  is  sufficient  for  my  purpose  to  point  out 
that  Suffragism  and  Feminism,  with  their  common 
doctrine  of  "  equality,"  whence  is  quarried  the  corner- 
stone of  economic  independence  in  their  new  temple 
of  freedom,  does  contemplate  the  abolition  of  all 
maternal  nurture. 

And  that  brings  us  to  a  curious  fact — the  fact  being 
that,  so  far  as  this  maternal  function  is  concern'=;d, 
Suffragism  and  Feminism  are  retrogressive,  not  to  the 
extent  of  carrying  us  "back  to  Nature,"  but  to  the 
extent  of  carrying  us  back  to  something  lower  than 
the  animals. 

The  Higher  Life  of 
the  Lower  Animals. 

It  is  a  common  contention  of  Suffragists  and  Femin- 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  275 


ists  that  the  state  of  dependence  of  woman  upon  man 
has  no  sanction  whatever  from  the  glorious  example 
set  to  us  by  the  lower  animals.  As  Mrs  Oilman,  the 
leading  American  Feminist,  says  : 

"  We  are  the  only  animal  species  in  which  the  female  depends 
on  the  male  for  food — the  only  animal  species  in  which  the  sex- 
relation  is  also  an  economic  relation.  It  is  commonly  assumed 
that  this  condition  also  obtains  among  other  animals,  but  such  is 
not  the  case.'' 

It  is  not  indeed.  As  is  well  known,  and  as,  indeed, 
Mrs  Gilman  points  out,  "  the  common  cat  "  feeds  her- 
self and  her  young.  The  tom-cat  has  no  responsibility 
whatever  in  the  matter.  He  does  not  have  to  maintain 
a  wife  in  a  state  of  subjection  and  parasitism.  He  is 
gloriously  and  promiscuously  free  in  his  amours,  sows 
his  wild  oats  nocturnally,  and  keeps  the  benefits  of  his 
own  economic  independence  entirely  to  himself,  and 
degrades  no  she-cat  whatever  to  a  parasitical  or  servile 
level.  And  so  it  appears  that  the  human  male  and 
female — man  and  woman — have  grievously  departed 
from  the  exalted  example  set  to  them  by  tom-cats. 
"  We  are  the  only  animal  species  in  which  the  female 
depends  on  the  male  for  food."  We  are  also  the  only 
human  animal — the  only  civilised  being. 

But  Suffragist-Feminism  is  not  apparently  content  to 
go  back  to  the  glorious  example  of  the  lower  animals. 
A  woman  is  a  mammal,  just  like  "  the  common  cat." 
And  mammals  are  the  highest  order  of  vertebrate 
animals — mammals  were  a  very  definite  advance  in 
the  scale  of  creation  ;  and  the  most  prominent  charac- 
teristics of  the  mammalia  are  expressed  in  the  maternal 
sacrifice  of  the  placental  union  of  mother  and  child,  in 
the  prolonged  period  of  gestation,  and  in  the  lacteal 
nutrition  after  birth — a  sacrifice  which  was  one  of  the 
most  important  factors  in  the  progress  of  mammals. 
If,  therefore,  the  human  species  is  to  progress  to  the 
higher  life  of  the  tom-cat  and  the  she-cat,  we  ought  to 
stop  there  and  be  content,  and  not  press  onward.  For 
the  she-cat  at  least  suckles  her  young,  even  though  she 
is  economically  independent    But  emancipated  woman 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


seeks,  in  her  march  forward  under  the  inspiration  of  the 
high  example  of  the  lower  animals,  to  abandon  that 
non-individualistic  function.  The  mammal  arises  from 
a  subordination  of  individualism  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  species.  The  emancipated  "  mamma,"  however, 
will  distinguish  herself  from  all  other  mammals,  even 
"  the  common  cat,"  by  "  living  her  own  life,"  and 
scorning  maternal  sacrifice. 

"Womanliness  Must  Go.** 

It  is  obvious  that  such  a  rash  and  revolutionary 
adjustment  in  the  economic  status  and  maternal 
philosophy  of  woman  would  in  any  case,  even  if  left 
to  itself,  evolve  a  readjustment  of  morality  equally  rash 
and  revolutionary.  But  it  is  already  provided  for  in 
the  actual  "constructive"  programme  of  Suffragist- 
Feminism.  As  Miss  Cicely  Hamilton  remarks,  "  Autho- 
rity to  her  (woman)  is  a  broken  reed."  And  she  asks  : 
"  What,  we  wonder,  would  be  the  immediate  result  if 
the  day  of  independence  and  freedom  from  old  restric- 
tions were  to  dawn  suddenly  and  at  once  ?  Would  it 
be  to  produce,  at  first  and  for  a  time,  a  rapid  growth 
amongst  all  classes  of  women  of  that  indifference  to, 
and  almost  scorti  of,  marriage  which  is  so  marked  a 
characteristic  of  the — alas,  small — class  who  can  sup- 
port themselves  in  comfort  by  work  which  is  congenial 
to  them?"  ("  Marriage  as  a  Trade,"  p.  28.)  Noting,  in 
passing,  the  admission  again  made  of  what  effect  the 
higher  education  of  women  is  having  upon  their  attitude 
towards  marriage,  the  answer  to  that  question  is  that 
Feminism  is  already  answering  it.  As  another  Feminist 
writes  :  "  There  is  no  fruit  in  the  garden  of  knowledge 
it  is  not  our  determination  to  eat."  The  fruit,  mean- 
while, is  ripening.  For  there  is  no  aspect  of  sexual  re- 
lations that  Feminism  does  not  freely  discuss.  All 
reticence  is  honestly  and  courageously  disdained  and 
the  healthy  phraseology  of  the  Bible  is  resurrected 
freely.  So  far  as  I  know  there  is  no  corner  of  sexual 
phenomena  or  relationships  that  Feminism  has  not 
already  explored,  and  the  articles  of  its  new  morality 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  277 


are  being  definitely  shaped.  The  "  kept  "  wife  must  go, 
and  learn  to  look  after  her  own  children  as  well  as  her- 
self The  unwedded  mother  must  be  restored  to  the 
position  of  dignity  which  the  marriage  institution  has 
robbed  her  of.  "  Womanliness,"  of  course,  must  go  to 
the  wall. 

"  It  is  this  womanliness  which  the  sentimental  desire  to  retain, 
by  forbidding  women  the  vote  ;  it  is  this  womanliness  which  tlie 
non-sentimental  desire  to  disperse  by  giving  them  the  vote  .  .  . 
It  is  true  that  professional  advocates  of  Women's  Suffrage  do  not 
say  this  :  they  loudly  assure  us  the  contrary  ;  but  that  is  partly 
because  they  have  a  sentimentalist  following  which  they  dare  not 
lose  and  partly  because,  being  mostly  women,  they  have  not 
grasped  the  Sex  War."    {The  Freewoman,  vol.  i,  p.  66.) 

And  all  the  barred  gates  before  "  all  the  walks  of 
life"  must  go  too:  "From  the  judge's  seat  to  the 
legislator's  chair  ;  from  the  statesman's  closet  to  the 
merchant's  office,"  says  another  Feminist,  "  from  the 
chemist's  laboratory  to  the  astronomer's  tower,  there  is 
no  post  or  form  of  toil  for  which  it  is  not  our  intention 
to  attempt  to  fit  ourselves  ;  and  there  is  no  closed  door 
we  do  not  intend  to  force  open."  In  fact,  as  Miss 
Olive  Schreiner  says  in  Wovjan  and  Labour,  "  we  take 
all  labour  for  our  province."  It  will  be  noted,  however, 
that  in  all  the  catalogues  of  the  walks  of  life  which 
women  are  now  to  tread,  no  mention  is  ever  made 
of  the  humbler  walks  of  life.  It  is  assumed  that 
woman  will  occupy  the  judge's  seat,  but  not  that  she 
will  be  a  "  man  in  possession  " — which  I  believe  is 
the  lowest  grade  of  the  legal  profession.  They  will  be 
in  the  merchant's  office,  and  up  the  astronomer's  tower  ; 
but  they  contemplate  with  no  ecstasy,  and  not  at  all, 
being  in  the  dustman's  cart  or  down  the  bottom  of 
a  coal  pit.  Certain  unpleasant  corners  of  the  whole 
province  of  labour  will  still  remain  the  undisputed 
prerogative  of  man. 

"  Marriage  Must  Go." 

And  I  think  we  must  say,  too,  that  marriage  must  go. 
For,  in  the  confusion  of  many  voices  (or  rather,  of 
written  words)  the  prevailing  note  's  that  the  institu- 


278  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


tion  of  marriage  has  survived  its  day.  And  so  we  have 
Feminists  writing  on  "  the  fullest  legal,  social,  and 
moral  recognition  of  polygamy,"  as  the  surest  way 
of  obtaining  justice  for  the  unmarried  mother  and  her 
child.  Elsewhere  we  find  a  reasoned  justification  for 
the  decline  of  marriage  in  order  to  bring  about  that 
decrease  in  the  population  which  will  check  or  mitigate 
the  inevitable  effect  of  men's  wages  coming  down  as 
the  result  of  woman's  world-wide  competition  with 
him.  And,  mingled  with  many  views  springing  from 
the  aims  of  social  amelioration,  are  views  concerning 
the  ethics  of  the  relation  of  the  sexes  from  which  a 
few  examples  must  suffice,  in  each  case  the  expression 
of  lady  "  Feminists  "  : 

"  Indissoluble  monog^amy  embodied  as  a  legal  enactment,  or 
postulated  as  a  strict  morality  affecting  people  of  every  range 
of  temperament,  is  an  unjustifiable  tyranny,  psychologically 
monstrous  and  morally  dangerous.  It  is  blunderingly  stupid  and 
reacts  immorally,  producing  deceit,  sensuality,  vice,  promiscuity, 
prostitution,  spinsterdom,  and  a  grossly  unfair  monopoly. 

"  In  short,  the  law  has  no  appropriate  business  in  the  affairs  of 
the  human  spirit.  Its  operations  lie  in  cruder  spheres.  It  might 
as  well  legislate  upon  the  tints  of  the  clouds  and  the  curves  of  the 
sea  waves.    It  can  bid  passion  neither  come  nor  go. 

"  I  certainly  hope  that  Freewomen  will  not  enter  upon  the  sex 
relaiionship  for  any  such  conscious  purpose  as  that  of  repro- 
duction ;  but  rather  that  they  will  find  in  the  passionate  love 
between  man  and  woman,  even  if  that  be  transient,  the  only 
sanction  for  sex-intimacy — a  very  different  thing  from  the  seeking 
of  such  a  sanction  in  the  habit  created  and  the  opportunity 
afforded  by  marriage  ...  To  the  healthy  human  being  there  is 
something  repugnant  in  long  continued  sexual  relationship  with 
a  person  with  whom  one  is  in  the  constant  and  often  jarring 
intimacy  of  daily  life  ...  Of  course,  the  shortening  of  the  period 
of  each  woman's  sexual  subordination  to  the  father  of  her  child 
will  leave  a  great  surplus  of  male  sex-activity,  which  will  have  to 
be  taken  into  account ;  and  it  is  under  the  pressure  of  this  surplus 
that  the  whole  edifice  of  life-marriage  will  at  last  fall  to  the 
ground. 

"  The  genera!  attitude  of  the  masses  to  motherhood  is  the  out- 
come of  looking  at  the  subject  from  three  points  of  view,  the 
mystic,  the  moral  and  the  domestic  ...  If  she  is  not  licensed  by 
a  certificate  known  as  'lines,'  to  produce  children,  motherhood 
is  the  disgraceful  result  of  giving  way  to  the  low  passion  of  sex 
.  .  .    No  mother  is  (regarded  as  being)  worthy  the  name  unless 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  279 


she  is  anxious  to  act  as  nursemaid,  sempstress,  and  washer- 
woman  to  her  infant  ...  It  is  not  sufficient  that  she  should 
want  to  render  such  services  now  and  again  when  the  mysterious 
power  called  love  makes  her  delightfully  and  unreasonably 
jealous  of  anyone  who  does  anything  for  her  child  ;  no,  such 
services  must  be  persistently  given  in  the  name  of  duty,  and, 
compared  with  theui,  any  work  of  a  literary  or  artistic  nature  for 
which  we  may  have  a  gift,  is  menial.  As  a  Freewoman  I  .  .  .  can 
find  nothing  but  cant  and  humbug  in  the  idealistic  prejudices 
which  are  responsible  for  the  general  altitude  of  men  and  women 
to  this  vital  subject  ...  I  speak  as  a  Freewoman,  not  as  a 
libertine.  But  emphatically  I  repeat  that  sterilisation  is  a  higher 
human  achievement  than  reproduction.  Coming  now  to  the 
moral  aspect  of  motherhood,  to  argue  that  a  woman  is  fulfilling 
her  highest  purpose  in  producing  a  child  provided  she  is  married, 
but  that  she  disgraces  herself,  her  sex,  her  family  and  society  if 
she  becomes  a  mother  without  being  married,  is  illogical  to  a 
degree  .  .  .  For  many  reasons  it  may  be  argued  that  it  is  ex- 
pedient for  a  couple  to  marry  when  they  have  children,  but  none 
of  them  worth  discussion  has  an  ethical  basis  ...  I  seem  to 
hear  a  chorus  of  such  retorts  as  '  Motherhood  develops  every- 
thing that  is  best  in  a  woman.'  Does  it  ?  Have  you  never  seen 
a  brilliantly  clever  woman  go  all  to  pieces  when  she  becomes  a 
mother  ?  No,  I  am  not  referring  to  a  physical  collapse  but  to  the 
ruin  of  intellect  and  individuality.  Have  you,  men  and  women, 
never  lost  a  most  enthusiastic  worker  by  reason  of  her  getting 
married  and  being  a  mother?  .  .  .  Under  present  conditions 
women  are  expected  to  be  domestic  servants  to  their  children, 
and  even  when  they  are  capable  of  higher  work  they  frequently 
become  so  from  a  mistaken  sense  of  duty.  It  would  be  much 
better  for  their  children's  sake  and  for  the  sake  of  the  world  at 
large,  if  they  would  leave  the  nnrsemaidry  to  women  who  are 
not  equipped  for  any  higher  sort  of  work,  and  devote  themselves 
to  looking  more  closely  after  the  children's  education  .  .  .  Under 
present  conditions,  I  fail  utterly  to  find  any  explanation  to  justify 
the  attitude  of  the  masses  to  motherhood  and  the  superior  airs  of 
mothers  themselves."   {The  Freewoman^  vol.  i,  p.  153  et  seg.) 

Now,  if  it  had  been  possible  to  present  a  summary  of 
the  aims  of  Feminism  without  citing  any  examples  of 
its  aim  to  revolutionise  our  morality,  I  would  gladly 
have  done  so  ;  but  the  new  morality  is  so  indissolubly 
linked  with  the  economic  independence  and  freedom  of 
women  (as  that  in  turn  is  linked  indissolubly  with  the 
principle  of  sex-equality  which  is  at  the  root  of 
SufTragism)  that  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  make 
so  vital  an  omission.    But  the  last  thing  in  the  world 


28o 


WO]MAN  ADRIFT 


I  wish  to  do  is  to  create  a  prejudice  against  the 
political  aims  of  Feminism  by  giving  some  examples  of 
its  new  morality — if  that  had  been  my  object  I  should 
not  have  stopped  at  the  quotations  given. 

The  Price  of  Equality. 

To  discount  such  prejudice,  therefore,  it  is  only  right 
to  say  that  such  views  and  opinions  as  I  have  quoted, 
which  perhaps  may  not  find  an  echo  in  the  bosom  of 
the  matronly  Suffragist,  are  not  irresponsibly  ex- 
pressed, or  expressed  with  any  cowardly  shame  or 
furtiveness.  They  are  the  open,  and,  I  am  sure,  the 
perfectly  honest  opinions,  mostly  of  educated  women 
who  sign  their  own  names,  and  they  write  "  not  as 
libertines  but  as  freewomen."  They  are  in  advance  o< 
the  Suffragist — but  only  in  intellectual  perception,  for 
they  see  before  them  the  road  that  Feminism  must 
tread,  of  which  the  first  step  is  the  vote.  And  they 
have  an  honest  and  hearty  contempt  for  the  Suffragist 
who  will  not  see  before  the  end  of  her  nose,  and  who 
imagines  that  the  "  emancipation  "  of  women  begins 
and  ends  with  the  vote  and  with  what  the  vote  may 
legislatively  accomplish.  They  incarnate  the  spirit  of 
"  emancipation,"  whilst  the  Suffragist  fumbles  with  the 
letter  oi  it. 

And  yet  the  only  difference  between  the  Suffragist 
and  the  Feminist  is  that  the  Suffragist  is  the  Feminist 
minus  her  intellectual  honesty  and  perception.  The 
difference  between  the  most  elementary  Suffragist  and 
the  most  revolutionary  Feminist  is  not  in  principle,  but 
in  degree — with  this  further  difference,  that  the  ele- 
mentary Suffragist  does  not  grasp  the  full  meaning 
of  her  principle  and  the  Feminist  does.  The  Feminist 
has  the  courage  of  her  logic — the  Suffragist  bases  her 
claim  upon  logic,  and  then  shirks  its  consequences,  and 
wishes  to  effect  the  meanest  compromise  between  her 
purely  personal  jealousy  of  man's  political  "superiority" 
and  her  desire  for  the  domestic  security  which  his 
labour  affords.  All  the  Feminist  does  is  "to  think  the 
thing  out."     Taking  seriously  all  that  is  implied  in  the 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  281 


sex-cquality  principle  of  Suffragism  ;  taking  seriously 
Mill's  remedy  for  wifely  subjection — the  vote,  and  the 
"  power  "  of  economic  independence  ;  taking  seriously 
the  "  eager  "  claim  of  Suffragists  for  their  "  economic 
independence,"  the  Feminist  merely  shows  what  its 
consequences  are,  and  accepts  them.  With  equality 
claimed  as  a  right,  equality  must  be  accepted  as  a 
burden.  When  women  rebel  at  their  economic  sub- 
jection to  men,  they  must  earn  their  own  independence 
by  their  own  effort.  If  they  do  not  rebel,  but  accept 
the  "  subjection,"  then  their  claim  for  political  equality 
becomes  ridiculous,  for  then  the  husband  represents 
them  as  much  by  his  vote  as  by  his  labour.  If  they  do 
•■ebel,  then  they  must  face  the  music.  The  matronly 
and  political  Suffragist,  however,  wishes  to  have  the 
best  of  both  worlds,  and  so  she  earns  alike  the  con- 
tempt of  Humanist  and  Feminist  ;  for  the  Feminist 
regards  her  as  a  halting  coward  in  the  cause  of 
Feminism,  and  the  Humanist  looks  upon  her  as  a 
traitress  to  the  cause  of  humanity.  But  midway 
between  the  two  stands  the  vast  army  of  Suffragism, 
steadily  moving  with  the  army's  own  advance,  pressing 
fi'-st  for  the  vote  and  then  content  to  say  "  Che  sara, 
sara,"  And  all  the  time  the  Feminist  says  :  "  Unless 
our  talk  of  equality  is  all  cant  and  merely  still  the 
degrading  cajolery  of  our  femininity,  then  we  must 
take  up  the  burden  of  life  just  as  men  do,  and  prove 
our  equality  or  perish  in  the  attempt.  With  the 
assertion  of  equality  must  go  the  last  of  our  privileges" 
— or,  as  Mrs  Billington  Greig  puts  it,  "The  old  con- 
dition and  the  new  demands  cannot  subsist  together." 
And  Mrs  Billington  Greig  is  not  only  one  of  the  ablest 
of  the  Feminists,  but  was  the  first  Suffragist  to  enter 
Holloway  "  for  the  vote." 

But  of  the  morality  of  Feminism  I  have  here  nothing 
to  say,  either  to  denounce  or  defend  it.  I  have  given 
some  examples  of  it  merely  to  show  that  the  "  woman's 
movement"  involves  the  most  fundamental  revolution 
of  our  current  morals  ;  and  to  show  how  blindly  foolish 
are  those  who  can  suppose  that  that  movement,  revolu- 
3? 


282 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


tionisin^  all  else,  must  not  also  revolutionise  our 
present  morality.  The  only  criticism  I  feel  called  upon 
to  make  of  it  here  is  this :  Anti-suffragists  are  often 
charged  with  being  merely  opposed  to  something — 
merely  and  negatively  "  anti."  Well,  the  Suffragists 
and  Feminists  also  are  merely  "  anti  "  in  the  long  run — 
their  movement  is  anti-social  and  anti-racial.  It  is 
true  that  in  some  directions  its  proposals  spring,  as 
they  think,  from  a  eugenic  conception  of  what  would 
be  for  the  good  of  the  race,  but  the  bulk  of  it  affirms 
the  individualism  of  woman  and  her  right  and  duty 
to  renounce  "  self-sacrifice "  and  the  maternal  racial 
dut)-.  The  Feminist  morality,  in  short,  is  that  the  old 
order  must  be  destroyed,  and  that  the  new  order  must 
accommodate  itself  to  the  individual  demands  and  hap- 
piness of  woman,  race  and  "  duty  "  apart.  And  so  it  is 
to  be  judged,  as  they  present  the  case,  by  its  effect 
upon  the  individual  happiness.  And  the  root  of  the 
matter,  from  the  Humanist's  point  of  view,  is  that  it 
will  not  secure,  but  destroy,  even  the  individual  happi- 
ness (which  would  be  its  only  justification)  whilst  also 
destroying  the  race. 

The  Humanist  as  Prophet, 

But  before  we  come  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  a  few 
words  may  be  said  in  self-complacent  justification  of 
the  predictions  of  the  Humanist — for  the  Humanist  is 
the  Anti-suffragist  who  has  had  foresight,  just  as  the 
Feminist  is  the  Suffragist  who  has  had  the  courage 
to  confront  the  consequences  of  Suffragism.  And  the 
Humanist  has  for  years  been  contemned  and  derided 
by  the  maternal  Suffragist  for  his  exaggerated  fears, 
his  tyrannical,  masculine  dread  of  woman's  "equality." 
his  revelation  of  his  real  unchivalrous  nature  ;  and, 
above  all,  for  his  grotesque  parodies  of  what  sort  of 
a  woman  the  Suffragist  was,  and  what  sort  of  a  world 
Suffragism  would  lead  to.  Well,  how  does  he  stand  as 
a  prophet  now?  He  said  that  Suffragism  would  kill 
*'  womanliness."  And  now  the  Feminist  abhors  the 
Suffragist  who  prates  of  the  thing.    He  said  it  would 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  283 


lead  to  woman  "  trying  to  be  a  man  and  to  do  a  man's 
work."  And  now  woman  is  going  "  to  take  all  labour 
for  her  province."  He  talked  of  "  the  new  woman  " 
and  was  jeered  at.  The  new  woman  now  laughs  at  the 
mental  frumpishness  and  the  dowdy  prejudices  of  the 
matronly  Suffragist.  He  said  that  Sufifragism  meant 
woman  losing  her  domesticity.  And  now  "domesticity" 
is  what  the  Feminist  makes  open  war  upon.  He  said 
that  Suffragism  was  "  war  on  motherhood."  And  now 
sterilisation  is  regarded  as  a  greater  human  achieve- 
ment than  maternity.  If  he  were  sufficiently  far 
sighted  he  said  that  the  end  of  Suffragism  would  be 
such  a  modification  of  the  relations  of  the  sexes  as 
would  tend  to  break  up  the  institutions  of  home  and 
family.  And  now  the  woman  who  regards  herself  as 
already  spiritually  emanicipated,  whilst  waiting  for  the 
vote,  advocates  a  morality  which,  in  its  mildest  form, 
must  modify  home,  family,  and  marriage  profoundly. 
He  talked  of  the  gradual  evolution  of  a  "  temperamental 
neuter,"  and  that  human  modification  is  already 
amongst  us.  All  he  was  derided  for  predicting  as  the 
result  of  "  the  vote "  is  now  the  programme  of 
Feminism  before  even  the  vote  is  won.  And  now 
we  can  see  that  even  the  coarse  catch-cries  of  the  man 
in  the  street  and  even  the  crude  jokes  of  the  comic 
papers  that  so  perturbed,  and  even  now  ruffle  the  Suff- 
ragist's matronly  bosom,  were  merely  the  instinct  of  the 
unreasoning  Humanist,  who  saw  further  into  the  prob- 
lem by  intuition  than  the  matronly  Suffragist  has  ever 
been  able  to  see  even  by  a  pathetic  devotion  to  the 
dreary  logic  of  Mill. 

The  Great  Experiment. 

And,  if  the  Humanist  has  been  right  in  his  percep- 
tion of  the  drift  of  consequences  so  far,  may  he  not, 
in  all  humility,  put  to  both  Suffragist  and  Feminist 
this  proposition  :  that  Feminism  will  only  lead  to  the 
fresh  subjection  of  woman  after  an  interval  of  "liberty"? 
That  is  what  he  believes.  He  opposes  Feminism,  not 
alone  because  it  would  be  bad  for  the  race,  but  not 


284  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


less  because  it  would  be  bad  for  woman,  which  means 
the  same  thing.  If  man  cared  to  live  his  own 
"individual"  life,  and  give  no  hostages  to  fortune, 
he  himself  would  be  no  loser,  sex  against  sex  ;  but 
the  Humanist  believes  that  that  is  only  because,  in 
the  general  degradation  of  the  race,  he  would  merely 
be  as  relatively  and  "  individually"  advantaged  as  now, 
though  living  in  a  world  no  longer  worth  human  en- 
deavour. The  Feminist  believes  it  will  be  a  gloriously 
better  world,  and  is  prepared  to  make  the  great  ex- 
periment— "which  may  or  may  not  be  a  successful 
effort."  If  it  could  be  a  successful  effort,  then  I  should 
like  to  be  on  earth  in  that  time  to  acknowledge  that 
there  were  forces  in  humanity  of  which  I  had  not 
dreamt.  But  the  Humanist  can  only  plead  and  urge 
that  the  effort  would  not  and  could  not  be  anything 
but  a  vain  one,  and  that  in  the  effort  itself  would  all 
the  disaster  lie.  For  man  will  always  be,  in  any  con- 
ception we  can  form  of  the  developments  or  modifica- 
tions of  sex,  the  economic  and  physical  superior  of 
woman.  He  is  that  superior  now,  as  much  as  in  any 
age,  and  that  superiority  alone  has  thrown  upon  him 
the  burden  of  supporting  woman  whilst  she  replenishes 
the  life  of  the  world.  As  Mrs  Gilman  herself  says, 
"The  male  human  being  is  thousands  of  years  in  advance 
of  the  female  in  economic  status,"  Would  not  woman, 
long  before  the  thousands  of  years  could  elapse  that 
might  or  might  not  make  her  his  equal,  have  sur- 
rendered herself  to  a  new  subjection  to  man  ? — a 
subjection  all  the  worse  because  she  would  live  in  a 
world  in  which  the  compensating  guarantees  for  her 
position  had  been  shattered,  and  because  she  herself 
had  torn  up  all  those  safeguards  against  which  she 
now  rebels  as  constituting  her  state  of  subjection? 
In  short,  where  a  man  now  marries,  will  he  no'-  then 
be  able,  with  his  economic  superiority  working  in 
alliance  with  the  drudgery  of  woman's  industrialism, 
to  hire  ? 


THE  GREAT  EXPERIMENT  285 


Respice  Finem. 

It  may  be  said  that  that  question  is  looking  far 
ahead.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  looking  far,  for  once 
ideas  become  accepted  they  are  not  long  in  being 
translated  into  results.  But  it  is  looking  ahead,  cer- 
tainly, and  that  is  exactly  what  must  be  done,  and 
what  statesmanship  is  not  doing.  It  is  blindly  accept- 
ing a  blind  force  of  human  error  as  though  it  were 
part  of  the  Divine  plan  for  the  progress  of  man,  and 
it  is  surrendering  itself  to  the  whirlwind.  Half-way 
through  the  revolution  that  Feminism  seeks  to  ac- 
complish once  the  vote  is  won,  mankind  might,  if  it 
could  only  readjust  its  view  to  our  own  day,  stand 
aghast  at  what  had  been  done.  But  it  could  not  then 
readjust  its  view.  What  was  already  accomplished 
would  have  familiarised  men  and  women  to  a  state 
of  society  that  would  seem  to  them,  as  another  Mill 
might  then  point  out,  a  "  natural "  state  of  society, 
though  it  were  one  from  which,  if  they  could  see  it 
with  our  eyes,  they  would  recoil  with  horror  could  the 
choice  between  now  and  then  be  presented  to  them. 
But  the  minds  of  those  men  and  women  whose  fate 
is  in  our  own  hands  to-day  would  be  subdued  to  their 
own  experience,  so  that  even  if  they  saw  the  ultimate 
end,  they  would  fatalistically  accept  its  consequences — 
just  as  now  some  people  are  prepared  to  face  the  first 
logical  consequences  of  Votes  for  Women.  But  there 
could  be  no  turning  back.  Once  all  women  were 
economically  dependent  on  themselves,  there  could  be 
no  violent  reversal  to  displace  them  industrially.  Once 
they  were  bringing  no  children  in  the  world  but  those 
that  they  themselves  wished  to  support,  the  whole 
pressure  of  the  social  order  would  be  upon  them  to 
keep  them  as  they  were,  just  as  the  whole  pressure  of 
the  social  order  ought  now  to  be  on  the  maintenance 
of  man's  obligation  to  maintain  wifehood  and  mother- 
hood in  the  domestic  security  which  provides  the  cradle 
for  the  family,  the  State,  and  the  race.  But,  once  star- 
ted on  its  path,  the  woman's  movement  would  move  to 


286  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


its  destined  end,  until  the  cry  of  a  distant  generation 
arose,  and  women  sought  to  escape  from  their  "  free- 
dom "  by  a  return  to  their  old  "  subjection,"  and  "  Give 
us  back  our  homes  and  the  security  of  manhood  for  our 
motherhood  !  "  became  the  agony  of  their  one  hope  in 
their  despair.  But  now  we  are  drifting  into  all  that 
darkness  with  our  eyes  open — playing  with  the  greatest 
issues  of  our  humanity  as  though  they  meant  nothing 
more  than  the  bulkiness  of  an  electoral  register — eager 
for  a  great  experiment  which  may  teach,  not  us,  but 
new  and  strange  generations,  that  we  men  and  women, 
even  us  of  this  year  and  day,  sinned  against  the  light 
and  encompassed  their  degradation. 

In  the  first  chapter  of  this  book,  the  view  was  com- 
bated that  the  extension  of  the  franchise  to  women  was 
a  mere  superficial  issue,  capable  of  being  decided  by  a 
mere  reference  to  the  word  "  democracy."  I  think  we 
have  now  seen,  at  any  rate,  how  superficial  is  that  view. 
But  we  may  now  return  to  that  "  superficial  issue  "  of 
the  Vote.  This  has  been  no  divergence  from  it.  We 
have  merely  been  looking  at  the  end  of  which  the  vote 
is  the  means.  We  have  merely  taken  a  peep  through 
the  doors  of  that  temple  of  woman's  liberty  of  which 
the  Vote  is  the  key. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


The  Wrong  Road. 

MR  LLOYD  GEORGE — MR  GEORGE'S  "  LITTLE  MAN  "- 
WOMEN  AND  WAR — WOMEN  AND  CIVILISED  GOVERN 
MENT — HOME  AND  THE  STATE — THE  DISFRANCHISE 
MENT  OF  MEN— HOME  AND  THE  VOTE, 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


The  Wrong  Road. 

'  We  have  to  prepare  the  children  for  the  world  ;  we 
want  to  prepare  the  world  for  the  children."  So  said  a 
Suffragist  speaker,  and  the  antithesis  seems  very  effec- 
tive until  we  enquire  into  it.  But  I  am  for  the  moment 
concerned  only  to  point  out  that  in  that  conception  of 
the  whole  duty  of  woman  man  has  no  place  whatever. 
Or  take  another  Suffragist  sentence :  "  Is  not  the 
woman  who  gives  her  husband  and  her  sons  to  fight 
for  their  country  as  much  concerned  as  to  the  way  in 
which  it  is  governed  as  they  ?  "  There,  again,  man  is 
out  of  it  altogether.  His  wife  "gives"  him  to  the 
country.  He  does  not  give  himself — the  British 
matron,  with  a  noble  and  generous  gesture,  sends  him 
forth  to  fight — makes  a  gift  of  him  to  his  country. 
That  is  a  new  and  startling  proprietorial  doctrine,  but 
the  curious  thing  all  through  this  controversy  is  the 
consistency  with  which  man  is  ignored  and  belittled. 
It  is  not  only  women  Suffragists  who  belittle  him  — 
those  members  of  his  own  sex  who  favour  the  cause 
also  speak  contemptuously  of  him.  Thus  a  male  and 
literary  Suffragist,  having  an  official  connection  with 
the  Suffragist  party,  in  dwelling  on  the  "insult"  to 
women  offered  by  a  contemplated  Franchise  Reform 
Bill  capable  of  being  turned  into  a  Bill  to  give  a  vote 
to  every  adult  woman  in  the  country,  asks  us  to  con- 
sider this  case,  among  others  : — 

"  The  school  teacher,  looking  round  on  her  class  of  boys  of  14, 
will  reflect  that  in  seven  years  the  dullest  and  the  weakest  of 
them  will  have  become  her  ruler,  though  in  the  interval  he  may 
only  have  added  vice  to  stupidity  and  grossness  to  folly." 

Well,  of  course,  the  hypothetical  teacher  may  have 
hypothetically  exerted  a  bad  influence  over  him — 

269 


290  WOMAN  ADRIFT  | 

though  I  do  not  think  young  women  are  often  found 
teaching  boys  of  14.  But  take  the  next  boy  in  the 
class — I  can  see  him  clearly:  a  bright,  manly  fellow. 
In  eleven  years'  time  (not  in  seven,  I  hope,  for  at  21  he 
will  only  just  be  beginning  to  learn  how  to  think  and 
to  know  what  life  is,  and  will  not  be  adult  enough  in 
intelligence  to  exercise  the  vote) — but  in  eleven  years' 
time  he  may  be  one  of  the  most  promising  intellects  in 
the  country,  whilst  the  teacher  remains  "  elementary  " 
and  stationary,  unless  she  has  brightened  up  a  bit  and 
become  an  Anti-suffragist. 

Mr  Lloyd  George. 

But  theie  you  see  the  familiar  trick  of  always  stating 
the  case  for  Suffragism  by  presenting  the  male  as  miser- 
able and  contemptible  and  the  woman  as  noble,  and 
glorious,  and  contemptuous  of  the  feeble-minded  male, 
and  one  gets  a  little  tired  of  the  unintelligent  monotony 
of  it.  There  is,  again,  Mr  Lloyd  George  who  says, 
"  Women  only  go  to  doctors  when  they  are  ill — a  man 
goes  when  he  thinks  he  is  ill."  It  is  not  true,  and  a 
man's  anxiety  about  his  own  health  generally  arises,  or 
receives  a  keener  edge,  from  the  fact  that  he  is  the 
breadwinner.  But  Mr  Lloyd  George,  too,  subscribes 
to  the  silly  fashion,  and  as  he  is  now  the  head  of  the 
parliamentary  phalanx  which  is  going  to  carry  the 
cause  to  victory,  it  is  time  to  train  a  gun  on  him  and 
get  in  a  shot  or  two  before  the  battle  begins. 

Now  that,  of  course,  is  a  dreadful  thing  to  do,  I  admit. 
To  belong  to  a  certain  political  party,  and  train  a  gun 
on  the  most  popular  of  its  leaders,  is  simply  not  ex- 
cusable. As  things  are,  if  you  want  to  attack  a  Libaial 
you  must  be  a  Conservative,  and  if  you  want  to  attack 
a  Conservative  you  must  be  a  Liberal.  It  is  rather 
a  silly  arrangement,  because  it  supposes  that  both 
Liberals  and  Conservatives  are  either  paragons  or 
ignoble  people,  according  to  what  you  are  yourself ; 
but  it  is  done  because  it  is  an  easy  thing  to  go  with 
the  stream,  and  in  any  case  there  is  a  ready-made 
audience  for  you.    And  then,  again,  as  I  said  in  the 


THE  WRONG  ROAD 


291 


beginning  of  this  book,  it  is  generally  only  cranks  who 
attack  their  "  leader,"  and  if  you  don't  happen  to  be 
a  crank,  party  cranks  nevertheless  mix  you  up  with  the 
cranks  of  the  party  should  you  venture  to  do  the  un- 
orthodox thing  and  speak  disrespectfully  of  a  "  leader." 
But  je  prends  nion  bien  ou  je  le  ti  ouve.  What  is  well  in 
Mr  Lloyd  George  (and  there  is  a  good  deal  that  is  well 
in  him)  I  accept,  even  gratefully  ;  what  is  not,  I  don't, 
though  I  generally  keep  it  to  myself  in  the  usual 
party  way.  But  in  this  case  Mr  Lloyd  George  is  not 
a  Liberal — he  is  a  Suffragist:  in  fact  the  head  of 
the  parliamentary  army  of  Suffragists,  and  as  Parlia- 
ment is  whence  Woman  Suffrage  will  come,  if  it  comes 
at  all,  Mr  Lloyd  Georr,e  becomes,  for  the  concluding 
purposes  of  this  book,  exactly  what  the  House  of  Lords 
was  to  him  for  a  good  deal  of  his  oratory.  The  fact 
that  he  had  Lords  for  colleagues  did  not  prevent  him 
from  saying  dreadful  things  about  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  the  fact  that  he  is  a  Liberal  will  not  prevent  me 
from  saying  truthful  things  about  him.  I  say  so  much 
merely  to  explain  how  matters  stand  to  those  "earnest 
Liberals  "  and  "  good,  loyal  Liberals,"  who  have  been 
deluded  by  Mr  Lloyd  George  into  thinking  that  there 
is  a  necessary  connection  between  Liberalism  and 
Woman  Suffrage.  He  says  so,  and  he  is  a  Liberal,  but 
that  doesn't  make  it  so.  Besides,  if  you  cannot  attack 
a  public  man's  public  opinions  there  is  nothing  to 
attack  about  him  (unless  you  are  in  Parliament,  and 
can  move  to  reduce  his  salary)  and  all  you  have  to  do, 
to  be  a  good  and  earnest  and  loyal  Liberal,  is  to 
squeeze  into  a  political  meeting,  spend  three  hours  of 
physical  discomfort,  get  horribly  excited,  applaud  like 
mad,  and  go  home  thinking  what  a  fine  fellow  the 
political  hero  is.  It  is  a  pleasing  and  innocent  frame 
of  mind,  and  brings  much  joy  also  to  the  political 
hero's  heart.  But  if  you  are  at  all  touched  with 
sophistication  that  innocent  joy  in  full  perfection  can 
have  belonged  only  to  the  enthusiasm  of  youth.  How- 
ever. .  .  . 


292  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Mr  George's  "  Little  Man." 

At  Bath,  on  November  24,  191 1,  Mr  Lloyd  George 
made  what  I  think  was  the  first  reasoned  (or  at  least 
argumentative)  speech  that  he,  or  any  other  political 
leader  has  ever  made  in  favour  of  Woman  Suffrage  as 
part  and  parcel  of  a  general  political  speech  on  policy 
— for  I  except  those  speeches  delivered  by  avowed 
supporters  to  specially  sympathetic  audiences,  and  such 
speeches  as  Mr  Lloyd  George  himself  has  made  until  the 
interruption  of  Suffragists  have  compelled  him  to  desist. 
And  one  passage  of  that  speech  was  this  : 

"I  know  they  say,  'Women  are  not  fit  to  Vote.'  You  get  a 
little  bit  of  a  man  (laughter)  the  whole  brains  of  whose  house- 
hold are  in  his  wife,  and  who  is  probably  absolutely  ruled 
by  her,  saying,  '  You  know,  women  are  not  fit  for  a  vote.' 
(Laughter).  He  is  the  ruler  of  creation.  Well,  you  know  it  is 
bad  taste  to  talk  like  that." 

Of  bad  taste  I  will  not  dispute  with  Mr  Lloyd 
George,  (perhaps  we  all  have  our  lapses)  for  it  would 
open  up  a  nice  question  of  casuistry  :  how  far  a  man 
with  a  certain  political  faith  may  be  supposed  to  have 
assented  to  what  he  thought  were  lapses  from  taste  on 
the  part  of  those  leaders  of  the  political  party  of  whose 
principles  he  approves,  although  he  by  no  means  ap- 
proved of  the  lapses  committed.  And  perhaps  a  waiver 
might  be  pleaded.  But,  questions  of  taste  altogether 
apart,  it  is  at  any  rate  "  very  bad  "  sense  for  Mr  Lloyd 
George  "  to  talk  like  that."  Does  he,  I  wonder,  on 
"getting  the  laugh,"  think  the  laugh  is  not  dear  at 
the  price  of  such  a  travesty  of  the  relative  values 
of  man  and  woman  ?  If  I  invert  the  relation,  and 
speak  of  a  "  big  powerful  man,  all  brain  and  muscle, 
and  not  only  the  governing  spirit  in  the  home,  but 
the  breadwinner  outside  it,"  will  he  assent  to  that 
picture,  manifestly  nearer  to  the  average  truth  than  his, 
as  cancelling  his  "  little  bit  of  a  man,"  small  both  in 
mind  and  in  body,  with  a  wife  who  is  "  the  whole 
brain  of  the  household  ? "  I  do  not  understand  the 
masculine  mind  that  seeks  to  prove  the  case  for  votes 
for  women  by  the  degeneracy  of  the  masculine  sex  , 


THE  WRONG  ROAD  293 


though  I  do  think  the  eagerness  some  men  show  to 
pour  contempt  upon  their  own  sex  is  one  sign  of  it. 

Women  and  War. 

However,  Mr  Lloyd  George's  speech  is  worth  further 
attention.  He  apparently  has  some  notion  that  the 
real  and  final  qualification  for  the  franchise  is  the 
possession  of  a  soul. 

"  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  how — unless  you  deny  to 
a  woman  the  possession  of  a  soul,  with  all  the  infinite  responsi- 
bility that  fact  implies — you  can  deny  to  her  tlie  power  which  you 
give  to  man  in  the  government  of  the  country." 

Now,  I  am  certainly  not  going  to  turn  Mohammedan, 
and  incur  the  infinite  responsibility  of  asserting  that 
woman  has  no  soul — for  I  suppose  Mr  Lloyd  George 
meant  "  assertion  "  rather  than  "  fact  " — but  I  do  take 
the  finite  responsibility  of  saying  that  a  woman's  vote 
no  more  depends  upon  her  soul  than  her  soul  upon  her 
vote.  "  There  are  also  celestial  bodies  and  bodies 
terrestrial ;  but  the  glory  of  the  celestial  is  one  and 
the  glory  of  the  terrestrial  is  another."  Why  reduce 
the  franchise  to  a  psychic  qualification  ?  If  Mr  Lloyd 
George  wants  a  better  argument  for  Woman  Suffrage 
than  that  woman  has  got  a  soul,  he  had  better  take  the 
argument  of  the  Suffragists  themselves,  that  a  woman 
has  a  body  and  a  mind  —  which  is  so  plausible  an 
argument  that  it  takes  an  entire  book  to  demolish 
it  and  to  see  where  it  leads.  But  the  psychic  argument 
does  not  take  more  than  a  paragraph.  One  democracy 
inaugurated  its  career  by  declaring  there  was  no  God. 
If  another  democracy  marks  its  final  perfection  by 
declaring  that  there  is  no  soul,  shall  we  then  all  be 
struck  off  the  register  and  have  no  votes  at  all  ? 

Some  of  the  newspapers  in  reporting  his  speech  set 
out  in  a  medallion  this  statement : — 

IF  WOMEN  BY  THEIR  VOTES 
PREVENTED  THE  INFAMY  OF 
A  SINGLE  WAR,  THEY  WOULD 
HAVE  JUSTIFIED  THEIR  VOTES 
BEFORE  GOD  AND  MAN, 


294 


WOMAN  ADEIFT 


By  "  prevented  the  infamy  of  a  single  war "  I 
suppose  that  Mr  Lloyd  George  meant  that  every 
single  war  was  an  infamy,  or  he  would  have  said  "  pre- 
vented a  single  infamous  war."  But  he  himself,  a  few 
months  earlier,  was  uttering  some  very  pregnant  words 
in  the  City  of  London,  and  the  effect  of  his  diplomatic 
utterance  was  to  convey  to  another  nation  that  Great 
Britain  would  contemplate,  under  certain  circumstances, 
a  war  which,  I  am  sure,  Mr  Lloyd  George  himself 
could  not  have  regarded  as  infamous.  But  I  take  it, 
from  the  effect  produced  by  that  declaration,  "  If 
women  by  their  votes  prevented  the  infamy  of  a  single 
war  they  would  have  justified  their  votes  before  God 
and  man  " — that  the  declaration  was  regarded  as  what 
you  call  "  a  clincher."  Well,  it  by  no  means  follows. 
For  women  by  their  votes  might  prevent  one  war  only 
to  produce  another  and  bigger  war  ;  and  women  might 
by  their  votes  do  that  which  would  even  produce  a  war 
that  otherwise  might  not  have  taken  place  at  all.  But 
men  are  just  as  concerned  as  women  in  preventing 
wars  if  the  prevention  be  consistent  with  the  honour 
and  the  safety  of  their  country.  After  all,  though 
the  women  "  give  "  them  to  the  country,  they  have  to 
find  the  ships,  the  money  and  the  men  to  do  the 
fighting.  Moreover,  even  that  intellectual  advocate  for 
Woman  Suffrage,  John  Stuart  Mill,  made  a  reservation 
on  this  very  subject  in  considering  the  wisdom  that 
might  be  expected  from  women  in  the  State  : 

"The  influence  of  women  counts  for  a  great  deal  in  two  of  the 
most  marked  features  of  modern  European  life — its  aversion  to 
war  and  its  addiction  to  philanthropy.  Excellent  characteristics 
both  ;  but  unhappily,  if  the  influence  of  women  is  valuable  for 
the  encouragement  it  gives  to  those  feelings  in  general,  on  the 
particular  applications  the  direction  it  gives  to  them  is  at  least  as 
often  mischievous  as  useful." 

Women  and  Civilised  Government. 

Apparently  Mr  Lloyd  George  thinks  man  has  taken 
no  part  in  the  civilisation  of  the  world.  For, 

"the  gentleness  of  woman  has  saved  mankind  from  barbarism  ; 
their  weakness  has  become  the  strength  of  civilisation,  and  now 


THE  WRONG  ROAD  295 


when  the  functions  of  government  have  been  conquered  by  the 
arts  of  gentleness  which  they  practise,  they  have  at  least  the 
right  to  an  equal  share  in  the  victory." 

In  that  passage,  at  any  rate,  Mr  Lloyd  George  got 
on  to  speaking  terms,  though  distantly,  with  part  of 
the  philosophy  of  the  question.  For  if  women  had 
indeed  subdued  the  functions  of  government  by  the 
arts  of  gentleness,  conquering  the  fiendishness  and 
barbarism  of  man,  there  would  be  some  case  made  out, 
not  for  their  having  the  vote,  but  for  considering  their 
claim  to  "a  share  in  the  victory"  as  something  to  set 
off  against  the  many  and  prime  considerations  of  why 
it  is  nevertheless  not  expedient  for  them  to  have  the 
Vote.  But  if  I  may  venture  to  express  the  opinion, 
Mr  Lloyd  George  makes  the  mistake  of  supposing  that 
because"  the  instruments  of  government  were  the  sword, 
the  battle-axe,  the  pillory,  the  rack,  the  dungeon  and 
the  gallows "  once  upon  a  time,  and  because  the  in- 
struments of  government  are  now  the  public  platform 
and  the  Vote  (with  the  military  to  be  called  out  when 
necessary,  and  reserves  of  police  kept  handy  at  Scotland 
Yard  for  the  militants)  that  it  is  women  who  have 
accomplished  the  miracle.  It  may  be  so,  but  the 
processes  by  which  they  have  accomplished  it  are 
veiled  alike  from  history  and  from  Mr  Llo}'d  George. 
Heaven  knows  what  noble  impulses  men  may  imbibe 
with  their  mothers'  milk,  and  I  have  written  no  line 
which  denies  to  women  the  tribute  of  exercising  a  fine 
moral  influence  in  the  formation  of  men's  characters. 
But  in  any  direct  civilising  of  the  instruments  of 
government  women  have  certainly  borne  no  share ; 
for  the  transformation  from  rack  and  dungeon  to  the 
annual  meeting  of  the  National  Liberal  Federation  and 
the  Vote  has  been  done  entirely  by  man.  If  Mr 
Lloyd  George  meant  that  women  are  gentler  and 
more  peaceful  in  their  natures  than  men,  no  one 
denies  it.  But  that  does  not  carry  us  as  far  as  his 
emotional  expression  and  rhetorical  extension  of  that 
sentiment  no  doubt  carried  his  audience. 


296  WOMAN  ADKIFT 


Home  and  the  State, 

Still,  it  brought  him  up  to  one  other  consideration, 
and  as  he  might  have  pursued  it  to  some  advantage  it 
is  a  pity  he  did  not  pursue  it.  For  he  dwelt  on  the 
fact  that  legislation  now  affects  the  home,  and  that 
therefore  women  should  have  the  vote.  Well,  it  has 
already  been  pointed  out  that  to  give  women  votes 
for  the  sake  of  influencing  legislation  affecting  the 
home  does  not  end  there,  for  it  would  also  give 
women  votes  to  influence  all  that  great  body  of 
legislation  which  does  not  come  anywhere  near  the 
home.  But  man  is  also  affected  by  the  home — the 
home  is  not  woman's  exclusive  interest — and  the 
fallacy  that  man  may  not  legislate  for  the  home 
because  a  woman  dwells  in  it,  belongs  to  a  very 
old  order  of  fallacy. 

"Who  rules  o'er  freemen  must  himself  be  free" 
seemed  to  have  sense  as  well  as  poetic  rhetoric  until 
Johnson  exclaimed  in  parodic  derision, 

"  Who  drives  fat  oxen  must  himself  be  fat.' 

But  the  question  of  whether  the  extension  of  legis- 
lation affecting  the  home  should  also  extend  the  right 
of  voting  to  woman  is  linked  up  with  another  question  : 
whether  the  State  is  going  to  enter  the  home  at  one 
door  whilst  votes  for  women  and  the  woman's  move- 
ment drives  her  out  at  the  other.  Mr  Lloyd  George 
no  doubt  believes  that  the  more  legislation  enters  the 
home  the  better — he  said  that  in  New  Zealand '  the 

'  It  may  be  remarked  that  in  the  course  of  this  book  I  have 
overlooked  all  reference  to  the  operation  of  Woman  Suffrage  in 
New  Zealand,  Australia,  Finland,  Norway,  and  one  or  two  of  the 
least  settled  states  of  the  United  States  of  America.  The  over- 
sight is  not  accidental.  But  I  have  refrained  from  touching  upon 
the  point  for  two  reasons:  (i)  That  that  is  the  affair  of  those 
countries  and  not  ours,  though  certain  ladies  from  the  Colonies 
come  over  here  to  take  part  in  an  agitation  which  is  just  as  litUe 
their  concern  ;  and  (2)  that  I  am  not  weakened  in  my  belief  that 
Woman  Suffrage  is  a  mistaken  cause  for  our  country  because 
other  countries  have  committed  the  very  mistake.  And  the 
conditions  between  these  countries  and  ours  are  too  widely 


THE  WRONG  ROAD 


woman's  vote  had  "widened  the  horizon  of  the  home." 
But  it  is  not  an  accepted  axiom  that  widening  the 
horizon  of  the  home,  if  by  that  is  meant  that  you 
cannot  tell  where  the  home  leaves  off  and  the  State 
begins,  is  so  self-evidently  a  desirable  thing  as  Mr 
Lloyd  George  seems  to  think  we  shall  all  take  it  to  be. 
The  more  developed  the  State  outside  the  home,  and 
the  better  organised  the  home  within  itself,  the  more 
perfect  the  State ;  but  that  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  the  better  man  did  his  own  work,  and  the 
better  woman  did  hers,  the  better  for  everybody.  And 
it  will  not  do  for  statesmen  to  be  penetrating  the  home 
with  legislation  whilst  assisting  a  movement  whose 
whole  influence  is  against  the  home  ;  and  then  to  base 
their  claim  for  votes  for  women  on  the  ground  that  the 
State  is  entering  where  its  presence  has  become 
necessary  as  a  foster-mother.  I  do  not  know  whether 
that  is  an  anti-Liberal  view  or  not,  but  it  is  at  any 
rate  a  view  to  be  taken  into  consideration,  and  to  be 
answered,  before  it  is  assumed  that  the  extension  of 
legislation  affecting  the  home,  is  any  reason  for  women 
to  have  votes.  And  again,  I  should  more  readily 
believe  that  Mr  Lloyd  George  had  taken  some  pains  to 
think  out  the  connection  between  the  home  and  votes 
if  he  had  devoted  some  part  of  his  speech  to  consider- 
ing what  was  going  to  be  the  effect  on  the  home  of 
married  women  throwing  away  their  legal  right  to 
maintenance  as  the  price  of  their  votes. 

diflferent  to  allow  of  any  profit  to  be  drawn  from  their  experiences, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  Woman  Suffrage  has  not  been  in 
operation  long  enough  to  make  their  own  experience  of  much 
value,  so  far,  even  to  themselves. 

Nor  have  I  allowed  myself  space  in  which  to  touch  upon  the 
international  aspect  of  the  matter — an  aspect  adequately  dealt 
with  by  such  men  as  Lord  Curzon  and  Lord  Cromer.    It  is  worth 
while  to  point  out,  however,  even  in  a  footnote,  that  our  greatest 
i  rival,  challenging  us  all  along  the  line,  is  a  virile  race  whose 
(  women  are  still  content  to  accept,  and  to  excel  in,  the  domestic 
'  mission  of  woman.    Feminism  has  made  no  headway  in  per- 
verting the  hausfrauen  of  Germany  to  a  sense  of  the  importance 
i  of  woman  taking  "  all  labour  for  her  province  "  to  the  neglect  of 
j  the  nurture  of  the  race. 

V 


298  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Mr  Lloyd  George,  however,  seems  to  be  a  helpless 
victim  of  the  notion  that  a  man  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  home,  or  his  wife,  or  his  children,  or  anything  that 
there  is.  "  Who  can  say,"  he  asks, "  that  her  experience, 
her  point  of  view,  is  not  more  worth  considering  than 
that  of  the  man  on  the  Housing  Question  ?  "  Well,  a 
woman  whose  experience  of  women  is  quite  as  pro- 
found, I  daresay,  as  Mr  Lloyd  George's  opinion  of 
them,  tells  me  that  women  are  very  difficult  to  move 
on  the  housing  question,  especially  those  who  go  out 
to  work,  for  they  would  rather  cram  the  family  into 
two  small  rooms  than  distribute  the  family  over  four, 
because  two  extra  rooms  would  make  a  great  difference 
in  the  domestic  work  to  be  done.  But  what  is  the 
man's  vote  for  but  to  express  her  opinion  too,  after 
they  have  talked  the  matter  over,  if  it  be  a  question 
affecting  home  interests  ?  Are  we  to  abolish  plural 
voting  in  one  direction  merely  to  establish  it  in  another  ? 
Or  is  it  supposed  that  the  wife  will  vote  one  way 
and  the  husband  the  other,  and  that  the  husband's  vote, 
which  may  at  least  be  as  wise  as  the  wife's,  is  to  be 
cancelled  by  hers  } 

The  Disfranchisement  of  Men. 

But  if  Mr  Lloyd  George  is  so  anxious  for  women 
to  have  votes,  because  some  part  of  our  present 
"  d-omestic "  legislation  touches  things  which  concern 
people  who  live  in  homes,  why  is  he  not  equally 
anxious  that  men,  who  have  votes  already,  shall  be 
allowed  to  ase  them  on  this  all-supreme  question  which 
touches  hom»s  and  the  people  in  them,  as  vitajly  as  all 
the  questions  he  mentioned  rolled  into  ©ne  and  then 
magnified,  not  by  rhetoric,  but  by  a  big  multiple  ? 
Why  is  he,  who  believes  in  giving  votes  to  women, 
so  contemptuous  of  the  votes  that  men  have  already 
got,  that  he  is  going  to  help  to  rush  through  Parlia- 
ment a  measure  upon  which  no  single  voter  has  ever 
cast  a  vote '    On  the  day  before  he  left  J-pndon  for 

'  I  am  wrong.  There  have  been  several  obscurS  Suffragist 
candidatures,  but  the  ignominious  character  of  their  failures 
anables  Suffragists  to  point  out  my  error  only  at  their  peril. 


THE  WRONG  ROAD  299 


Bath  he  addressed  a  meeting  of  the  supporters  of 
Woman  Suffrage  to  say  that  he  thought  they  ought  to 
work  up  enthusiasm  for  a  wholesale  enfranchisement  of 
woman  instead  of  only  a  partial  and  discreet  enfran- 
chisement. I  do  not  in  the  least  object  to  him  work- 
ing up  the  enthusiasm,  for  all  women  to  have  votes,  if 
he  will  only  give  other  people  the  chance  to  work 
up  the  enthusiasm  for  no  women  to  have  votes.  But 
he  rules  men  and  their  votes  off  the  electoral  map 
altogether  :  "  I  know  people  say,  '  But  men  are  in- 
terested in  this  question.  Why  don't  you  leave  it 
to  the  men  ?  '  Men  are  not  equally  interested."'  Well, 
this  book  may  help  to  enlighten  Mr  Lloyd  George  on 
that  point.  Yet  if  this  is  a  woman's  question  only 
or  even  mainly,  why  does  he  not  see  that  it  is  referred 
to  the  women  at  least  to  decide  it  ?  And  if  it  is  a 
woman's  question,  why  is  a  Parliament  of  men  going  to 
decide  it  without  making  any  attempt  to  find  out  what 
women  think  about  it  ? 

But,  "  with  arms  outflung,"  he  declaims  : — 

All  we  ask  is  that  the  custodian  of  that  cupboard  shall  have  a 
weapon  to  defend  her  children's  bread  !  " 

Words.  It  may  be  all  he  asks,  but  it  is  not  all  we 
shall  get.  But  are  men  not  capable  of  defending  their 
children's  bread  ?  From  the  very  peril  that  he  spoke 
of  did  not  the  men  "defend  their  children's  bread" 
with  the  most  overwhelming  earnest  and  evidence  of 
their  intentions  that  has  ever  been  given  in  a  parlia- 
mentary battle  ?  And  is  Mr  Lloyd  George  so  very 
sure  women  may  not  sell  their  children's  bread,  from 
his  point  of  view,  whilst  being  converted  to  the  theory 
that  they  are  defending  it  ?    And  because  most  wives 

'  Answering  a  deputation  of  Suiifra^ists  at  Glasgow  on  Nov, 
21,  1907,  Mr  Lloyd  George  actually  said  that  "  he  could  not  con- 
ceive  of  a  revolution  of  this  character  being  introduced  into  our 
constitution  without  the  country  being  asked  upon  it  definitely,' 
and  he  added  :  "  It  could  hardly  be  said  that  the  400  members 
of  Parliament  pledged  to  Woman  Suffrage  had  really  consulted 
their  constituents  about  it."  In  November,  1907,  in  short,  he 
himself  made  his  position  now  untenable. 


300 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


stay  at  home  cutting  up  bread  and  butter  whilst  most 

husbands  are  working  outside  to  earn  it,  does  that 
domestic  function  give  them  any  qualification  for  the 
vote  which  is  not  adequately  fulfilled  by  the  man  ? 

But,  you  may  ask,  why  pay  so  much  attention  to  a 
single  speech  ?  The  answer  is  clear :  It  is  the  only 
speech  ever  yet  delivered  by  a  responsible  statesman  in 
immediate  promotion  of  the  measure  of  Woman  Suffrage 
as  apart  from  academic  generalities  that  no  one  has  been 
expected  to  pay  attention  to.  And  the  arts  of  platform 
oratory,  which  are  really  similar  to  those  of  the  drama 
in  the  sense  that  they  are  made  to  appeal  to  the  emo- 
tions rather  than  to  the  intelligence,  sway  audiences  in 
really  a  dreadful  and  disconcerting  manner.  For  a 
descriptive  report  of  Mr  Lloyd  George's  speech  says  : 

"But  the  crowning  effort  was  the  masterly  plea  for  the  ad* 
mission  of  women  to  a  share  in  the  government  of  their  country. 
The  eyes  of  every  woman  were  brightened  with  hope  where  they 
were  not  dimmed  with  tears  as  they  heard  the  most  magnincenj 
tribute  that  has  ever  been  paid  to  the  gentleness,  the  self- 
sacrificing  nobility,  the  overwhelming  importance  of  the  sex, 
while  the  whole  meeting,  men  and  women  alike,  were  swept  off 
their  feet  by  the  vision  which  this  magician  has  conjured  up 
before  their  wondering  eyes." 

Now,  that  sort  of  thing  is  much  more  alarming  than 
satisfactory.  In  the  report  of  his  speech  the  only  in- 
terruptions recorded  were  from  Suffragists  engaged  in 
their  usual  task  of  interrupting  perversely,'  but  there 

1  And  so  little  did  he  please  the  women  whose  cause  more  than 
anybody  else's,  he  was  supporting,  that  we  read,  the  day  after  ; 
"  About  two  o'clock  on  Sunday  morning  thirteen  members  of  the 
Woman's  Social  and  Political  Union,  male  and  female,  drove 
in  taxi-cabs  to  the  residence  of  Mr  S.  Robinson,  M.P.,  at  Box 
some  five  miles  distant,  where  Mr  Lloyd  George  was  spending 
the  night.  They  made  their  way  into  the  grounds,  and  shouted 
and  sang  outside  the  windows  and,  despite  the  efforts  to 
remove  them,  did  not  leave  until  they  had  satisfied  themselves 
that  they  had  aroused  the  wh'i'e  household."  If  Mr  Lloyd 
George's  faith  in  the  cause  can  s  -rvive  that  sort  of  thing,  he  is 
indeed  superhuman.  One  almost  distrusts  the  "serene  martyr's 
faith"  that  can  let  a  man  make  a  speech  in  favour  of  Woman 
Suffrage  and  go  to  bed  to  be  wakened  in  the  small  hours  by  the 
din  of  Suffragists,  and  calmly  go  to  sleep  again  without  making 


THE  WRONG  ROAD  301 


was  no  dissentient  voice  raised  to  Mr  Lloyd  George's 
emotional  but  not  highly  intellectual  oration,  and  we 
may  take  it  that  men  who  went  there  with  no  mind  at 
all  on  the  subject  had  it  made  up  for  them  by  the 
"  masterly  plea  "  and  the  "  most  magnificent  tribute  " 
(and  the  other  qualities  that  will  be  looked  for  in  vain 
in  the  actual  report)  that  "  swept  them  off  their  feet." 
And  when  we  consider  that  the  Parliamentary  majority 
that  is  being  relied  upon  to  carry  the  measure  has 
apparently  gone  no  deeper  into  the  question  of  what 
the  woman's  movement  means  and  is  than  Mr  Lloyd 
George  himself  has  done,  and  that  the  power  it  possesses 
of  making  its  Parliamentary  will  prevail  is  now  absolute, 
it  is  worth  whjje  paying  some  detailed  attention  to  the 
first  real  case  for  the  measure  as  an  imminent  political 
thing  that  the  leader  of  the  cause  in  Parliament  has 
ever  presented  inside  or  out. 

Home  and  the  Vote. 

It  is  a  painful  thing,  of  course,  to  criticise  a  Liberal 
leader — very.  But  it  would  have  hurt  even  more  to 
have  repressed  what  I  have  said  of  Mr  Lloyd  George's 
speech  upon  a  matter  which  transcends  Liberalism  or 
any  other  creed  except  that  of  the  cause  of  humanity 
itself.  The  Countess  of  Arran,'  a  Suffragist,  quoted  a 
Liberal  M.P.'s  complacent  but  brainless  dictum  on  the 
whole  question,  addressed  to  herself  :  "  The  only  reason 
for  Woman  Suffrage  is  that  there  is  no  reason  against 
it."  She  approved  the  sentiment,  of  course,  but  it  was 
very  kind  of  her  not  to  mention  his  name. 

That  is  just  the  sort  of  fatuous  blindness  that  would 
have  been  cured  if  there  had  been  anything  like  an 
adequate  discussion  of  this  question.  But  we  see  that 
even  Mr  Lloyd  George,  the  parliamentary  leader  and 
champion  of  the  cause,  has  apparently  not  permitted 

acleast  some  effort  to  "  wrestle"  with  the  faith.  But  a  day  later 
Lloyd  George  was  announcing  that  he  himself  would  gladly 
move  the  amendment  to  the  Franchise  Reform  Bill  extending  its 
provisions  to  women  !  Well,  human  nature  must  be  simply 
dying  out. 

'Winifred,  Countess  of  Arran,  The  Standard,  Oct.  3,  191 1. 


302  WOMAN  ADBIFT 


his  mind  to  probe  the  question  to  a  much  greater 
depth  than  the  M.P,  who  pronounced  that  view.  Of 
the  "eagerness"  of  Suffragists  to  secure  not  only  a 
vote,  but  the  reduction  of  married  women  to  the 
position  of  maintaining  themselves  as  though  they 
were  single  women,  his  mind  apparently  takee  no 
cognisance  whatever.  He  himself  is  too  eager  in 
this  case  to  do  that  dangerous  thing  in  all  cases : 
to  legislate  in  advance  of  the  sense  of  the  nation. 
Nor,  I  suppose,  did  any  of  the  women  whose  "eyes 
were  dimmed  with  tears "  imagine  that  he  was  com- 
mending to  them  a  cause  promoted  by  women  who 
are  "eager"  to  deprive  them  of  their  legal  claim  on 
their  husbands'  wages  and  to  send  them  out  to  earn 
their  own  living. 

In  "the  first  speech  ever  made  by  a  Cabinet  Minister 
on  a  Woman  Suffrage  platform,"  Mr  Lloyd  George 
uttered  a  peroration  which  asked  us  "  to  call  in 
the  aid,  counsel,  and  inspiration  of  women  to  help 
us  in  the  fashioning  of  legislation  which  would  cleanse, 
purify  and  fill  with  plenty  the  homes  upon  which  the 
future  destiny  of  this  great  commonwealth  of  nations 
depends."  The  perorations  of  politicians  should  always 
be  looked  at  indulgently.  Probably  "  the  backyards 
of  England  "  would  have  expressed  just  as  accurately 
as  "  homes  "  the  precise  processes  of  Mr  Lloyd  George's 
thoughts.  But  it  is  stated  that  he  has  been  studying 
this  matter  for  twenty  years,  which  seems  a  clear  case 
of  overstudy.  For  if  he  had  been  studying  it  for 
twenty  hours  he  ought  to  know  that  the  movement 
he  is  assisting  is  one  that  is  the  shortest  possible 
cut  to  disintegrating  "the  homes  upon  which  the 
future  destiny  of  this  great  commonwealth  of  nations 
depends."  He  ought  to  know  that  the  whole  aim  and 
effect  of  Suffragism  is  to  create  separate  and  individual 
interests  for  men  and  women,  and  to  diminish  their 
joint  interests,  and  not  to  consolidate  those  interests 
in  home  and  family.  And  if  he  really  believes  that 
the  future  destiny  of  this  great  commonwealth  of 
nations  depends  upon  our  "  homes,"  then  he  ought 


THE  WRONG  ROAD  303 


to  be  an  Anti-suffragist ;  and  if,  believing  that,  he 
is  a  Suffragist,  then  it  only  shows  how  a  man  may 
waste  much  time  with  no  profit. 

To  the  wider  possibilities  of  the  development  of 
economic  independence  he  gives  us  no  consoling  or 
opposing  philosophy.  He  may  say  that  men  will 
never  allow  their  womenfolk  to  be  deprived  of  the 
legal  security  which  the  law  now  gives  them,  though 
if  man  is  to  be  ruled  out  of  account  on  the  major 
question,  I  don't  see  why  he  should  be  called  in  to 
prevent  a  development  that  would  at  any  rate  not 
adversely  affect  him  as  a  sex.  But  Mr  Lloyd  George 
might  also  put  it  that  men  will  have  to  protect  women 
against  themselves — which  is  just  what  he  now  says 
they  are  not  "equally  interested"  in  doing.  And  if 
he  thinks,  now  that  that  development  is  presented  to 
him,  to  gloze  over  the  dangers  and  difficulties  of  the 
future  by  saying,  "  Let  us  give  them  the  vote  first,  and 
think  out  the  consequences  afterwards !  "  I  can  only 
say  that  that  attitude  of  mind  is  not  statesmanship, 
but  what  Meredith  called  "  deadmanship  " — drift  and 
pusillanimity,  and  emotion  where  thought  should  be. 

Sydney  Smith  said  of  Lord  Macaulay,  "  He  over- 
flows with  learning — and  stands  in  the  slop!"  Mr 
Lloyd  George  does  not  overflow  with  learning,  but 
he  does  overflow  with  emotion,  and  stands  on  the 
platform,  and  though  emotion  makes  excellent  rhetoric 
it  makes  very  bad  sense.  And  if  he  thinks  that  to 
give  Votes  to  Women  will  end  a  difficulty,  he  is 
greatly  mistaken,  for  it  will  be  but  the  beginning  of 
a  new  tangle  of  difficulties  which  statesmen  at  some 
future  time  or  other  may  vainly  try  to  unravel.  It  is 
all  very  well  to  say,  as  he  says,  "  Men  will  lose  slaves 
but  find  comrades,"  but — making  all  allowance  for  the 
exigencies  of  platform  oratory,  which  sometimes  perhaps 
do  an  injustice  to  the  orator — it  is  at  least  just  as 
likely  that  men  will  lose  comrades  and  the  comrades 
find  themselves  in  a  new  slavery.  That  is  the  real 
question  to  be  faced  —  and  to  be  considered  and  not 
dismissed  by  a  rhetorical  tag.    And  if  Suffragist  or 


304  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


Feminist  could  convince  me  that  the  new  order  would 
open  the  gates  to  a  new  glory  for  their  sex,  I  would 
gladly  see  every  door  flung  wide  open  that  barred 
woman's  way,  and  would  throw  my  own  weight,  for 
the  little  it  might  be  worth,  against  each  door.  For 
even  if  one  were  "a  little  bit  of  a  man"  I  believe  all 
men  have  in  them  that  little  bit  of  essential  manhood 
which  would  sacrifice  much  to  secure  the  dignity,  the 
glory,  and  the  happiness  of  woman.  And  that  is  why 
I  have  no  contempt  for  Suffragist  or  Feminist.  I 
believe  them  to  be  misguided  and  adrift,  and  1 
believe  that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  man  who  thinks 
they  are  to  say  so  with  what  reason  and  courtesy 
he  can  command  ;  and  to  try  to  convince  them,  even 
the  most  perversely  sceptical  of  the  good  motives  of 
men  amongst  them,  that  no  man  would  stand  out 
against  halving  the  dominion  of  the  political  world 
with  woman  if  he  were  not  convinced  that  in  the 
end  it  would  be  doubling  the  burden  of  her  life, 
uplifting  her  in  nothing,  profiting  the  race  by  nothing, 
but  robbing  it  of  much.  But,  if  the  revolution  is 
accomplished,  then  in  the  time  that  we  shall  not 
know  others  may  see  what  comes  of  the  speculations 
of  amiable  theorists  who,  like  Mill,  allow  themselves 
to  be  guided  by  abstract  conceptions  without  thinking 
out  where  their  theory  will  lead  to  when  realised  in 
actual  practice.  And  it  will  indeed  be  odd  for  future 
generations  to  realise  that  the  woman  of  their  day, 
with  her  thews  and  sinews  and  graceless  strength, 
came  from  the  high-browed,  smooth-haired  mid- 
Victorian  blue-stocking,  mating  her  placid  intellec- 
tualism  with  the  emotional  nature  of  the  "practical 
politician  " ! 

"  We  have  to  prepare  the  children  for  the  world  ; 
we  want  to  prepare  the  world  for  the  children."  It 
sounds  well  ;  it  has  a  nice  antithetical  balance,  and  all 
the  seduction  of  rhetoric.  Mr  Lloyd  George  himself,  by 
altering  the  pronouns,  might  have  uttered  it.  But  if 
we  change  the  terms  whilst  preserving  the  antithetical 


THE  WBONG  EOAD  305 


balance,  we  shall  see  how  much  reason  it  expresses. 
"  We  have  to  prepare  clothes  for  the  man  ;  we  want  to 
prepare  man  lor  the  clothes."  If  a  tailor  said  that,  we 
should  know  that  he  was  talking  nonsense.  For,  with- 
out any  reflection,  we  should  instantly  perceive  that 
the  two  functions  were,  not  necessarily  opposed,  but 
entirely  different.  But  because  we  do  not  so  instantly 
realise  what  preparing  the  children  for  the  world  means, 
and  what  preparing  the  world  for  the  children  involves, 
the  incongruity  is  not  so  apparent.  And  uttered,  as  it 
was,  on  a  platform,  it  no  doubt  sounded  irrefutable, 
and  no  doubt  the  audience  applauded  it  warmly.  But 
if  a  cook  told  her  mistress,  "  I  have  to  prepare  the 
dinner  for  the  table — I  cannot  be  expected  to  prepare 
the  table  for  the  dinner,"  we  should  think  she  was  an 
extremely  reasonable  cook  indeed. 

And  I  dwell  on  that  sentence  of  nicely  balanced 
antithesis  not  merely  to  show  how  delusive  a  thing 
Suffragist  rhetoric  may  be,  but  because  the  speaker 
could  not  have  better  framed  a  sentence  that  contained 
the  material  for  the  whole  practical  and  simple  philo- 
sophy of  this  big  matter.  We  cannot  better  delimit 
the  spheres  of  man  and  woman  than  by  saying  it  is  the 
work  of  man  to  prepare  the  world  for  the  children  and 
the  work  of  woman  to  prepare  the  children  for  the 
world.  But  so  flexible  and  mutual  and  reciprocal  are 
the  relations  of  man  and  woman  that  the  work  of 
each  helps  the  other,  so  that  even  in  preparing  the 
children  for  the  world — which  is  no  small  matter,  being 
perhaps  more  than  half  the  battle — a  mother  is  also 
helping  to  prepare  the  world  for  the  children.  For 
by  every  son  she  sends  out  into  the  world,  equipped 
with  those  virtues  which  her  maternal  care  has  grafted 
upon  his  budding  manhood,  she  is  helping  to  prepare 
the  world  for  the  children  of  her  children.  And  if  it 
were  possible  for  the  human  species  to  have  fashioned 
themselves  with  a  divine  insight  as  well  as  with  the 
knowledge  gained  from  human  experience,  they  could 
not  have  hit  upon  a  more  harmonious  dualism  than  the 
Creator  created  in  Man  and  Woman.    It  is  because 


306  WOMAN  ADRIFT 


that  dualism  is  in  danger  of  being  disturbed  by  taking 
a  first  step  that  we  should  confront  the  danger,  not  by 
looking  only  on  the  present,  but  by  looking  beyond 
that  first  step  with  a  prophetic  vision. 

In  a  book  which  has  primarily  a  negative  purpose 
only — to  point  out  a  wrong  way — there  has  been  no 
place  to  speak  of  the  positive  side  of  woman's  work 
and  life,  and  of  how  much  the  happiness  of  the  human 
race  depends  upon  her  virtues  as  wife  and  mother. 
But  no  one  who  knows  anything  of  life  can  be  ignorant 
of  the  truth  that  more  domestic  tragedies — the  silent, 
ceaseless,  chronic  tragedies,  and  not  those  that  cure 
themselves  by  rising  to  a  crisis — are  accounted  for  by 
the  imperfect  and  unsympathetic  attention  that  the 
mistress  of  a  home  gives  to  it  than  by  any  other  cause 
short  of  that  of  destitution  itself  And  a  movement 
which  is  based  upon  a  view  of  life  that  would  assist 
that  neglect  in  some  women,  and  compel  it  in  all,  is  not 
a  movement  which,  by  any  possibility  that  the  human 
mind  can  foresee,  could  bring  any  happiness  whatever 
to  the  human  race.  Yet  the  first  step  that  we  are  now 
asked  to  take  is  to  give  the  sanction  of  a  nation's  law 
and  outlook  to  that  movement — to  a  movement 
repudiated  by  women  not  less,  at  any  rate,  than  it  is 
urged  by  women — and  to  a  movement  that  would,  once 
it  were  impelled  by  our  sanction,  progress  by  its 
own  momentum  and  be  stopped  only  by  its  own 
consequences.  And,  humanly  speaking,  the  first  step 
would  be  irretrievable. 

•  ••••• 

I  have  now  finished  the  task  I  set  myself — to  deal 
with  the  demand  for  the  political  enfranchisement  of 
women,  which  is  the  political  side  of  the  woman's  move- 
ment ;  and  I  leave,  perhaps,  to  another  time  some 
effort  to  trace  the  further  tendencies  of  modern 
Feminism.  But  even  when  confining  myself  to  the 
political  side  of  the  movement,  I  have  shown,  I  think, 
how  very  far  it  takes  us — far  out  beyond  the  political 
sphere  altogether,  and  deep  into  the  very  bowels  of  our 
social  and  family  life.    In  considering  a  subject  of 


THE  WRONG  ROAD  307 


so  wide  a  range,  it  is  inevitable  that  some  errors  of 
judgment  must  have  crept  into  my  work,  and  even 
some  traces  of  prejudice — for  even  where  there  is  most 
strength  of  conviction  some  weakness  of  prejudice  may 
creep  in.  But  for  those  defects  I  plead  that  human 
weakness  from  which  even  man  is  not  exempt,  and 
never  will  be.  But  errors  of  judgment  and  prejudices 
are  not  matters  within  our  control,  and  in  any  case 
I  hope  that  such  blemishes  are  few.  But  what  is 
within  one's  control  is  that  one's  arguments  shall  be 
honestly  conceived  and  honestly  set  out.  A  fallacy  is 
that  defect  in  logic  which  deceives  the  mind  of  the  man 
who  utters  it,  and  there  is  nothing  in  himself  but 
his  own  intelligence  to  correct  it.  After  reviewing 
what  I  have  written,  I  have  failed  to  detect  any  fallacy 
in  my  reasoning,  despite  an  earnest  desire  to  discover 
any  that  might  have  flown  from  a  pen  if  it  travelled 
faster  than  the  judgment.  What  fallacies  have  escaped 
my  own  detection,  however,  will  be  detected  by  others 
and  will  be  exposed  as  they  deserve.  But,  whatever 
they  be,  those  errors  and  weaknesses  are,  as  I  say, 
beyond  my  own  control,  and  remain  despite  my  judg- 
ment and  beyond  my  knowledge. 

But  what  is  not  beyond  my  knowledge  is  the  spirit 
in  which  I  have  written.  For  a  fallacy  a  man  may  be 
excused,  since  it  is  only  his  intelligence  that  is  at  fault, 
but  for  specious  reasoning  there  is  no  extenuation,  since 
that  is  intended  to  deceive  others  and  not  oneself. 
From  that  blemish,  at  any  rate,  I  think  this  book  is 
free.  I  think  the  case  I  have  had  to  present  is  so 
strong  that  it  needs  no  argument  that  will  not  bear 
sifting  down  to  the  very  bottom  of  its  nature.  But  I 
should  in  any  case  have  disdained  any  artifice  that 
cheated  others,  for  it  would  not  only  have  afforded  me 
no  satisfaction,  but  it  would  have  deprived  me  of  the 
chief  satisfaction  one  can  have  in  holding  any  opinion 
or  creed — the  satisfaction  that  it  is  sincerely  held  and 
can  be  justified  to  the  reason.  Fallacies  may  have  a 
long  life,  for  they  belong  to  the  imperfections  of  one's 
own  mind,  but  sophistries — which  are  those  fallacies 


3o8 


WOMAN  ADRIFT 


designed  to  deceive  others — are  soon  exposed  and 
recoil  on  the  man  who  utters  them.  And  the  worst 
tendency  of  modern  political  life  is  that  both  fallacies 
and  sophistries  flourish,  for  people  are  often  more  eager 
to  impose  their  cause  on  others  than  first  to  impose 
it  upon  themselves.  But  in  twenty  years'  practice  of  a 
profession  that,  as  it  is  now  carried  on,  offers  many 
temptations  to  intellectual  dishonesty  and  little  en- 
couragement to  its  opposite,  I  have  been  fortunate  in 
never  having  written  a  line  upon  any  public  matter 
which  was  not  the  expression  of  my  own  sincere  faith  ; 
and  that,  together  with  some  practice  in  considering 
public  affairs,  exhausts  my  credentials  and  fitness  for 
the  task  I  have  endeavoured  to  perform. 

That  I  have  presented  an  answer  to  every  part  of 
the  case  I  oppose  is  too  much  to  claim  ;  but  I  do 
claim  that  I  have  left  no  considerable  corner  of  the 
large  field  wholly  unexplored,  and  I  think  I  cannot 
have  failed  to  have  enlightened  some  minds  as  to  the 
almost  illimitable  ramifications  of  the  question  dis- 
cussed, whether  I  have  convinced  them  on  all  points  or 
none.  That,  at  any  rate,  is  a  step  gained  ;  for  at  least 
it  will  have  proved  to  them  the  imperative  need  for 
that  calm,  and  grave,  and  unhurried  consideration 
which  a  question  of  such  magnitude  demands,  especially 
from  those  who  see  in  it  merely  an  increase  of  the 
number  of  voters  in  the  State.  But  my  greatest 
endeavour  has  been  so  to  present  the  case  I  have 
presented  as  to  weaken  the  faith  of  those  who  have 
given  their  adherence  to  what  I  have  tried  to  prove  is  a 
wholly  mistaken  cause. 

But,  if  that  were  accomplished,  my  satisfaction  would 
not  lie  in  carrying  off  an  argumentative  victory,  but  in 
having  done  something  to  lessen  a  great  danger.  Nor 
should  I  welcome  only  for  its  own  sake  any  victory  for 
the  case  I  have  urged  in  a  parliamentary  battle,  unless 
it  were  a  victory  won  also  over  the  hearts  and  minds  of 
my  countrymen  and  countrywomen,  and  so  an  en- 
during victory. 

Life  offers  but  few  pleasures,  but  the  supremest 


THE  WEONG  BOAD  309 


pleasures  that  life  can  hold  arise  from  the  affections — 
from  the  loves  of  men  and  women,  the  love  of  children 
and  the  joys  of  home.  And  it  is  because  I  firmly 
believe  that  those  supremest  pleasures  of  life,  and  all 
those  gracious  ways  of  thought  and  feeling  which  make 
life  tolerable,  would  in  the  long  run,  and  by  its 
inevitable  development,  be  endangered  by  the  course 
against  which  I  have  written,  that  I  have  made  this 
reasoned  appeal  not  only  that  the  first  step  may  not  be 
taken  but  that  none  shall  continue  to  look  even  doubt- 
fully down  the  road  which  it  begins,  but  shall  resolutely 
turn  their  backs  upon  it  and  seek  the  happiness  of  the 
race  on  the  old  path. 

That  path,  at  any  rate,  has  led  onward  and  upward  ; 
and  if  we  consider  the  obstacles  that  man  has  had 
to  encounter,  and  through  what  labyrinths  the  path 
has  twisted,  and  from  what  he  started,  and  with  what 
little  light  man  has  had  to  grope  his  way,  mankind  has 
done  better  than  it  could  ever  have  hoped  ;  and  man 
may  yet  reach  that  melancholy  perfection  of  his  own 
nature  and  knowledge  when  he  will  discover  that  his 
spiritual  nature  is  better  than  the  destiny  that  has 
been  assigned  to  it.  But  we  can  only  march  on  in 
hope,  trusting  in  the  path  we  have  trodden. 

On  that  path  men  and  women  have  gone  together, 
each  other's  complement,  perfect  in  union,  incomplete 
apart — each  needing  what  the  other  can  supply,  each 
doing  best  what  the  other  can  do  least  well,  and  one 
doing  what  the  other  cannot  do  at  all.  But  this 
natural  and  harmonious  dualism  of  mankind  would 
be  riven  and  sundered  on  the  new  path  that  woman 
wishes  to  ♦r-  ai.  And  in  treading  it  she  would  take  her 
mate  along  with  her — but  her  mate  no  longer,  and  only 
a  fellow  being  still  unlike  her,  half  embittered  and 
half  estranged,  compelled  to  rivalry  but  unsubdued, 
and  each  fallen  from  the  other's  grace. 


DATE  DUE 

